When they were later asked to rate the fairness of their decision-making process, those who had flipped the coin rated themselves as having been significantly more fair than those who hadn’t.
If 90% of coin-flippers favored themselves, that implies that ~80% of those who lost their flip decided to change the outcome (assuming ~100% of those who won their flip took the win). If we suppose that people consider “I flipped the coin but decided to ignore it” as no more unfair than “I just gave myself the better one directly”, then the no-flip group will rate themselves as 10% fair 90% unfair and the flip group will rate themselves as 60% fair 40% unfair without anyone being dishonest about their fairness.
I believe they did a follow-up study to try to adjust for this. In the follow-up they were able to surreptitiously note the results of the coin flip (without the flipper knowing). The people who flipped the coin but ignored the result because it didn’t go the way they wanted still rated themselves more fair than those who did not flip the coin but just decided to make things go their way without going through a coin-flipping ritual first.
If 90% of coin-flippers favored themselves, that implies that ~80% of those who lost their flip decided to change the outcome (assuming ~100% of those who won their flip took the win). If we suppose that people consider “I flipped the coin but decided to ignore it” as no more unfair than “I just gave myself the better one directly”, then the no-flip group will rate themselves as 10% fair 90% unfair and the flip group will rate themselves as 60% fair 40% unfair without anyone being dishonest about their fairness.
I believe they did a follow-up study to try to adjust for this. In the follow-up they were able to surreptitiously note the results of the coin flip (without the flipper knowing). The people who flipped the coin but ignored the result because it didn’t go the way they wanted still rated themselves more fair than those who did not flip the coin but just decided to make things go their way without going through a coin-flipping ritual first.