Fairness

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.