Fair to both

Porcupine takes no sides, and both people get heard.

For example

Porcupine · a tipSam, Jordan has raised the schedule a few times. You might say what you heard before adding your view.

How Porcupine uses it

Anything you both see is built only from what you’ve both seen.
Private tips are about your own words and hearing the other person, never about winning.
Both of you know private tips exist.
When one of you hasn’t been heard yet, Porcupine may point it out.
Taking no sides doesn’t mean treating every harm as equal. When someone isn’t safe, Safety first comes before everything else.

Why it helps

People accept an outcome more readily when the process felt fair, and a big part of feeling it was fair is having a voice: telling your side and having it considered. Mediators are bound to impartiality for the same reason. It matters even more for an AI: AI models tend to tell people they’re in the right, and in experiments, people who got that agreement became less willing to own their part or repair things. Porcupine gives each person the same help, doesn’t tell either of them who’s right, and keeps everything shared even-handed.

What we don’t know yet

Most research on fair process comes from legal and workplace disputes, not conversations between people who are close.

The research

Studied with adults in general

Given people’s accounts of things they had done, 11 leading AI models approved of their actions 49% more often than people did, even when the accounts described deceiving or harming someone. In experiments, people trusted and preferred the AI that agreed with them, though it left them less willing to repair a conflict.

Cheng, M., Lee, C., Khadpe, P., Yu, S., Han, D., & Jurafsky, D. (2026). Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence. Science, 391(6792), eaec8352.

Studied with adults in general

In experiments on ways of settling disputes, people judged a process fairer, and accepted its outcome more, when they had control over presenting their own side.

Thibaut, J., & Walker, L. (1975). Procedural Justice: A Psychological Analysis. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Studied with coworkers

A meta-analysis of 183 workplace studies found that a sense that the process was fair went with greater job satisfaction and commitment and a better view of those in charge, over and above whether people thought the outcome itself was fair.

Colquitt, J. A., Conlon, D. E., Wesson, M. J., Porter, C. O. L. H., & Ng, K. Y. (2001). Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 425–445.

More research

Studied with adults in general

A review of procedural justice research found that having a voice in the process matters to people even when it doesn’t change the outcome.

Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice. Plenum Press.

Studied with couples

In a study of 31 couples, one partner pressing for change while the other withdrew was common, and who did the pressing depended on whose change was being discussed.

Christensen, A., & Heavey, C. L. (1990). Gender and social structure in the demand/withdraw pattern of marital conflict. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(1), 73–81.

Studied with couples

Across 74 studies, the pattern of one partner pressing and the other withdrawing was linked with lower relationship satisfaction and poorer communication.

Schrodt, P., Witt, P. L., & Shimkowski, J. R. (2014). A meta-analytical review of the demand/withdraw pattern of interaction and its associations with individual, relational, and communicative outcomes. Communication Monographs, 81(1), 28–58.

From practice

Professional standards for mediators require impartiality: no favoritism, bias or prejudice in what they say or do.

American Arbitration Association, American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution, & Association for Conflict Resolution. (2005). Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators, Standard II: Impartiality.

Library last updated October 2026.