Being fair or appearing fair: Strategic behavior in ultimatum bargaining

This article presents the results of two experiments that investigated fairness and apparent fairness in ultimatum negotiations. Results suggest that offerers--those presenting offers--were both strategic and exploitative: they made offers that appeared fair only when respondents (potential recipients) had full information about the amounts to be divided or when third parties labeled offers as to their fairness. In contrast, respondents ignored fairness claims but reacted to the sizes of offers and to third party's evaluations.