Specification of the parameters of this utility function [Behavioral Economics] This is from page 274 of "Advances in Behavioural Economics" by Camerer, Rabin, Loewenstein.
This chapter of the book is entitled "A theory about fairness, competition, and cooperation".

I have difficulty understanding parts of this equation. (see attachment).
I would need an explanation of the equation in detail (I assume this book is designed for graduate students, as I am currently an undergrad).
What do alpha and beta represent? What does monetary payoff mean exactly? Is it similar to game theory? Why is there a 0 in [xj-xi, 0]? And why is it 1/(n-1) and not n-1? This is very confusing for me, who has little mathematical background.
As @Henry commented and according to https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/117251/what-should-be-done-with-questions-that-have-been-self-resolved-as-a-comment-ins I made a community wiki with the answer:


  αi and βi are coefficients related to how much an individual i feels bad about being less wealthy or more wealthy than other people. max{xj−xi,0} is the difference between person j's wealth and person i's wealth if person j's wealth is higher than person i's wealth; otherwise it is 0. The division by n−1 to get an average is because there are n−1 individuals apart from person i for person i to compare to.