Reciprocity beliefs represent a challenge for researchers. Chapter 4 found a puzzling and robust correlation between reciprocity beliefs, on the one hand, and liberal–authoritarian values (LAVs), on the other. Chapter 10 argues that, underpinning the correlation between reciprocity beliefs and LAVs, it is hypothesized, is a disagreement over how to best respond to social dilemmas. People with more authoritarian response patterns to LAV items have a preference for maximizing cooperation by minimizing instances in which people who free ride on the collective effort unfairly walk away unpunished. People with more liberal values have a preference for minimizing instances in which people are unfairly punished despite being cooperators. In a discursive context, rich are more concerned about moral hazard, welfare abuse, and opportunistic behavior; people with more authoritarian response patterns will be more likely to incorporate such claims into their own basket of fairness considerations; and people with more liberal response patterns will be more likely to resist them. Chapter 10 provides evidence in support of this argument.

Because people hold different empirical beliefs regarding the fairness of the status quo, they also disagree over which policies to support or oppose. This is the focus of Chapter 3. Fairness beliefs provide individuals with a mental map to interpret the world and form opinions on redistributive social policies. Because what counts as a fair allocation of market income is different from what counts as a fair allocation of social benefits, beliefs about the fairness of the former can differ from beliefs about the fairness of the latter. As a result, fairness reasoning implies a disconnect between attitudes toward policies that take market income from those who have more (e.g., predistribution and taxation policies) and attitudes toward policies that give to people who can no longer provide for themselves (e.g., generous and inclusive social insurance). As a short-hand, the first types of policies are called redistribution from policies and the second type redistribution to policies. The chapter provides a friendly horse race between existing work and the conceptualization presented in this book: The evidence overwhelmingly supports the latter.