From Calamity to Sanity Post Series: Fairness in the SCARF Model

Queues, big queues have become a iconic part of our COVID19 world…

Fairness, like many of the SCARF dimensions, is heavily influenced by perception, though this does not reduce the impact of fairness-triggered reward and pain.

Why do we queue? Well some of us, at least… Queueing is the social mechanism of ensuring we get access (to whatever) in the order in which we arrived. A few years ago I was waiting in a long check in line at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Kings Cross, London. There was some uncertainty present - one line had formed for the three check in desks available. A foreign visitor arrived, scanned this line and walked straight up to a desk that had just become available. Immediately two people in the queue started calling out: “Back of the line, mate!” The transgressor of this social convention took some convincing (extra voices were added to the call), but eventually he complied. This is fairness in action. 

Fairness can be thought of as having access to the required resources, to things that satisfy immediate needs. This idea first struck me when following a slow driver on the inside lane, wondering why the other driver’s behaviour was irritating me. The insight came from understanding that this driver was blocking me from my perceived resource - the lane ahead. Another resource of our time - toilet paper. Hard not to mention again, but this has been a continual source of ‘Red Brain’ behaviour triggered by perceived fairness.

Access to attention is a prime resource that is in competition. When we perceive others to be over-using attentional ‘time’ (ours, or that of a person we are waiting to talk to) we often have some level of threat response. In fact, where ever there is competition for a resource, it is likely that someone will respond with the biology of threat through this ‘fairness channel’.

Fairness is one of the SCARF elements that is easily observed in animals, leading me to observe that SCARF is a truly biological model, not just a human construct. This video is quite amusing, yet beautifully illustrates primate response to fairness:

Did you hear his quote? “[This experiment] has now been done with birds, dogs and chimpanzees…” This experiment also demonstrates the second characteristic and trigger of Fairness - reciprocity. When something is given, yet not returned in some way, then threat is triggered. When reciprocity is given, a reward in the brain is experienced. The we open a door for a stranger and they walk through without acknowledging, we have a little moment of “well stuff you”.

This reciprocity also works with rules, when we perceive that rules have been applied to two different people with different outcomes. When we are one of those people, and we perceive that we are losing out, we respond very strongly with a fairness threat. Yet, we also feel sometimes stronger emotional pain when someone we are close to, or affiliated with, is the subject of the unfair treatment.

Many football fans respond emotionally to perceived unfairness via inconsistent umpiring decisions.

How often have you heard “That’s not fair!!”? Kids are especially sensitive to the reciprocal form of fairness. When our adult behaviours are not consistent with our expectations of kids we often see some sort of rebellion. This is very much the case when siblings or classmates seemingly get different consequences for the same issue. What people respond to is perceived fairness - threat or reward results largely from the way the situation is seen.

Finally, an immature perception of fairness is that everyone should receive the same (resource or consequence). As the underfunding of the complexity of situations and differences in individual needs, we form the more mature view that fairness is more about meeting needs than being equal.

As a parent (in lockdown or not), we need not only to be fair but also to be perceived as being fair. Often, actual and perceived fairness are not aligned, yet this can be resolved with certainty and conversation. Helping kids grow through the immature equality form of fairness, to understanding that people have different needs at different times is a part of the teaching role that belongs to home and school.

One way to positively influence the perception of fairness is to have people be involved in the determination of rules. One of the central ideas in my coming book From Calamity to Sanity, is to have conversations that co-create ways of working together (a.k.a rules or agreements). When this is done cooperatively with kids, they tend to perceive the ‘rules’ as being more fair than those imposed by ‘above’. In reality, we all feel like that, don’t we?