Fairness

Mike Bowler
by Mike Bowler

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We have a biological need for fairness. If we perceive a situation that is unfair, even if that unfairness doesn’t directly affect us, the anterior insula is activated1. The insula is a key part of our brain, relating to empathy2.

You might be thinking now that this clearly isn’t true for some people as they will lie and cheat and create situations that are dramatically unfair. Perhaps it isn’t that they’re lacking any sense of fairness but that rather their perception of what is fair, is different from ours. For them, perhaps things are more fair when they get the larger piece of the pie. The only thing we seem to know for sure in these situations is that these people have less activation of the insula3.

Productivity takes a hit when people perceive unfairness4 for a couple of reasons. When the insula is activated, it suppresses the prefrontal cortex, that part of our brain that does higher level, rational, thinking. We also have decreased activation of our reward centre4 and less dopamine. One effect of less dopamine is that we’re learning less effectively

Note that psychological safety is defined as a state where we have access to the prefrontal cortex so lack of fairness also means less safety.

Conversely, when we perceive fairness in our environment then we get more dopamine5.

So what does this mean for our working environment? We should strive to create as fair an environment as we can. Doing anything else will reduce overall productivity.

  1. Psychological Safety: The key to happy, high-performing people and teams by Radecki and Hull, 2018 ↩

  2. Uddin LQ, Nomi JS, Hébert-Seropian B, Ghaziri J, Boucher O. Structure and Function of the Human Insula. J Clin Neurophysiol. 2017 Jul;34(4):300-306. doi: 10.1097/WNP.0000000000000377. PMID: 28644199; PMCID: PMC6032992. ↩

  3. “Fairness Is a Hard-Wired Emotion” ABC News ↩

  4. Neuroscience for Coaches third edition, by Amy Brann, 2022 ↩ ↩2

  5. Tabibnia G, Satpute AB, Lieberman MD. The sunny side of fairness: preference for fairness activates reward circuitry (and disregarding unfairness activates self-control circuitry). Psychol Sci. 2008 Apr;19(4):339-47. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02091.x. PMID: 18399886. ↩