A new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology explores why a random procedure as trivial as a coin flip can evoke surprisingly strong feelings of unfairness. Across a series of experiments, the researchers behind the study observed that people’s perceptions of fairness depend not only on the outcome of random events, but also on who gets to carry them out. 

Even when everyone involved knew the process was entirely random, the participants still reported feeling disadvantaged (or even guilty) based on whether or not they were the one to flip the coin themselves. The findings reveal what the authors call an “illusion of unfairness,” showing that our sense of justice is shaped as much by perceived control as by actual results.

I recently spoke with the lead author of the study, Rémy Furrer, PhD — Behavioral Scientist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital — to discuss what inspired this research, what these findings reveal about human intuitions of fairness, and why we struggle to accept chance as truly impartial. Here’s a summary of our conversation.

What initially drew you to study the perception of fairness in something as simple as a coin flip?

Coin flips are used to settle all kinds of resource allocation dilemmas, from determining ball possession at the start of a football game to resolving ties between political candidates in elections. I expect that anyone reading the paper has flipped a coin at some point in their life for one purpose or another. 

Random processes like coin flips remove personal control and therefore provide an equal opportunity of outcome for those involved, which appeals to our sense of fairness. Because it is such a common and familiar process, it felt like the strongest test to examine whether an illusion of control over a prototypical random process — a coin flip — would affect perceptions of fairness.

An absurdly trivial but insightful experience helped form this line of thinking. Right before starting my PhD, we had to allocate student offices, and two of us wanted the same one. Over email, we agreed that a professor would flip a coin to decide. Later, my colleague (quite reasonably) suggested that we simply flip it ourselves. 

Someone asked which side my colleague preferred; they chose heads and then flipped a virtual coin three times. Each time, it came up heads, so it was settled, they would occupy a single (windowless) office, and I would occupy a shared (windowless) office. When I later saw the email thread, I was surprised that the procedure had changed and that I had not been part of it. 

Even though the process and outcome remained random, I still felt a faint and somewhat embarrassing sense of unfairness. I knew it made no difference who flipped the coin since the odds were identical, yet emotionally, it felt different. I was surprised that an arbitrary change in a random procedure seemed sufficient to shift my sense of fairness, despite me rationally knowing that it did not matter.

Could you give a brief description of procedural and outcome controls, and why you think people hold such strong beliefs in them?

Research on distributive justice demonstrates that we are sensitive to the fairness of the outcomes we receive, while research on procedural justice shows that the procedures leading to those outcomes also plays an important role. 

In our experiments, we defined procedural control as the perceived influence or involvement a person has in the procedural tasks themselves, such as being the one to choose heads or tails or to flip the coin. 

Outcome control refers to the perceived influence someone has over the result. In reality, of course, the flipper has no actual control over how the coin lands. To ensure this, some of our studies used virtual coin flips, while in the physical studies, an experimenter placed the coin on the participant’s hand before the flip and ensured it bounced off the floor to eliminate any potential control over the outcome.

These perceptions of control help us monitor the fairness of resource allocation processes and serve important psychological functions by helping us preserve a sense of agency and making outcomes feel more just. Research on procedural justice shows that even when outcomes are unfavorable, feeling involved, for instance by having a “voice” in the process, can enhance perceptions of fairness and make those outcomes easier to accept.

What triggers this illusion of unfairness and how persistent is it?

In one study, we examined whether the illusion of unfairness emerged after receiving an unfavorable outcome, as a kind of rationalization, or whether it was still present before participants knew the result. 

Interestingly we found that feelings of unfairness emerged before they even saw their result, and it only intensified after seeing that they had lost. This suggests that perceptions of procedural control are sufficient to elicit the illusion of unfairness, and that seeing the negative outcome produced by the coin flipper intensifies the feeling.

Focusing on the procedure itself, in another study, we tried to emphasize the randomness of the process by adding an additional layer to how the coin flipper was selected. Participants were explicitly told that the coin flipper would be chosen arbitrarily, based on which person had more letters in their user ID. 

It turns out, this manipulation did nothing to reduce the illusion of unfairness. Even when participants knew the flipper was selected randomly, they still felt the process was just as unfair as those who were not told. Simply appearing to have control, however arbitrary, was enough to make the outcome feel less fair. 

In three studies, we examined what happens when participants won a coin flip, either by flipping it themselves or by having their opponent flip. Interestingly, the illusion of unfairness was experienced by the winners. When participants flipped the coin and won, they reported feeling less fairness and more guilt about the outcome compared to when their opponent flipped. In other words, when they benefited from the outcome, they didn’t change their perception to feel like it was fairer because they flipped the coin, but instead felt guilty and responsible for giving the other person a bad outcome. This finding suggests that people aren’t just looking out for themselves; they feel concerned that their role in the random process created unfairness for someone else.

In your view, does the illusion of unfairness reflect cognitive bias? Or is it an emotional instinct?

In one experiment, we found that when participants were asked to make quick, intuitive judgments, they rated the process as significantly less fair than those who were given time to reflect and make reasoned judgments. This finding suggests that the illusion of unfairness is partly instinctual, and that deliberate reasoning can help reduce it. We’re currently testing strategies to help people reason through the process to mitigate any lingering sense of unfairness following these coin-flip procedures.

Do you have plans for follow-up research? Where would you like to see research on illusions of unfairness go in the future?

There are a few directions to expand on this work. One is to examine whether the illusion stems more from perceiving the opponent’s action of flipping the coin (that is, initiating the physical process that determines the outcome), or from the opponent choosing heads or tails (that is, making the prediction, which is then confirmed or disconfirmed by the outcome). 

It will be interesting to determine whether one or both aspects, action and prediction, contribute to the illusion of unfairness, and whether one plays a stronger role than the other.

I am also working on a set of experiments that test counterfactual thinking as a potential strategy to mitigate the illusion of unfairness. In these studies, participants are asked to consider how they would feel if they had been the one to flip the coin. Encouraging this kind of counterfactual reflection may help people recognize that who flipped the coin was arbitrary, which could in turn reduce perceptions of unfairness that arise from not having been in charge of the coin-flip procedure.

Take this science-backed test to find out if your locus of control is leading you to see life as unfair: Locus Of Control Scale