Inequity Aversion

Inequity aversion is a preference for fairness and a resistance to incidental inequalities, studied across the social sciences including sociology, economics, psychology, anthropology and ethology. Researchers who study inequity aversion aim to explain behavior that is not driven purely by self-interest but also by considerations of fairness. Some of the literature on the subject uses the term inequality aversion instead; social scientists generally distinguish the two by treating inequality as the gap in how resources are distributed and inequity as a more fundamental, institutional unfairness, so which term is used can depend on the specific context being discussed.