Posted on 09/20/2003 11:17:45 AM PDT by AdmSmith
Findings shed light on the role of emotion in human economic interactions ATLANTA In the first experimental demonstration of its kind, researchers led by Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal, PhD, at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University, and the Living Links Center, have shown nonhuman primates respond negatively to unequal reward distribution, a reaction often seen in humans based on their universal sense of fairness. While researchers have long recognized the sense of fairness within the human species, Brosnan and de Waal are the first to confirm this trait in nonhuman primates. The findings appear in the September 18 issue of Nature.
These new findings, coupled with previous scientific data that demonstrate a direct link between nonhuman primate behavior and that of humans, support a new school of thought that economic decision-making is based as much on an emotional sense of fairness as on rational considerations.
Identifying similar reactions in nonhuman primates as in humans offers insight into how such emotional reactions developed, providing researchers and economists new perspective on why humans make certain economic decisions in relation to efforts, gains and losses of others.
In this study, researchers made food-related exchanges with brown capuchin monkeys. The subjects refused previously acceptable rewards (cucumbers) if they witnessed their partners receiving higher-value rewards (grapes) for equal or less work.
This is similar to the negative response humans display when they see other individuals receiving a better deal.
"People often forgo an available reward because it is not what they expect or think is fair," says Brosnan. "Such irrational behavior has baffled scientists and economists, who traditionally have argued all economic decisions are rational. Our findings in nonhuman primates indicate the emotional sense of fairness plays a key role in such decision-making."
For this study, Brosnan and de Waal conducted four tests, each including two sessions of 25 trials, on pairs of female capuchins. First, they gave study subjects lower-value rewards of cucumbers if the subjects would exchange tokens. Then, they measured the study subjects' responses when grapes, a higher-value reward, were given to their partners for exerting varying levels of work.
"We showed the subjects compared their rewards with those of their partners and refused to accept a lower-value reward if their partners received a higher-value reward," says Brosnan, "This effect is amplified when the partner does not have to work for the reward."
The researchers recorded a 95 percent completed exchange rate with the subjects during the equity test, in which both subject and partner received cucumber as the reward for the same amount of work. The completed exchange rate fell to 60 percent during the inequity test, in which subjects observed their partners receiving grapes for completing the same amount of work. A further decrease to 20 percent of completed exchanges occurred in the effort-control test, when partners received the higher-value reward for less work. Finally, a 55 percent exchange rate was recorded for the cucumbers in the food-control test.
Brosnan and de Waal are conducting related studies in capuchins to further explain these responses. They also are conducing a similar study with chimpanzees.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
Have I heard that earlier in negotiations over wages...
This is similar to the negative response humans display when they see other individuals receiving a better deal.That's not "fairness," that's envy, a condition as reprehensible in humans as it is monkeys.
... envy can be based on unfairness and arbitraryness, and in that sense isn't reprehensible at all ...Envy is always based on a sense of unfairness or arbitrariness. The spiritual traditions of this world are of one accord on this: envy, no matter how righteous or just it may feel, envy will twist your soul into a gnarled up stump. Better to celebrate what you have than weep for what you have not or for how unfair it is that we all are not the same.
Wow. Good grapes mean more
than cucumbers to women.
I'll remember this...
The twist on "fairness" I always marveled at was the liberal Democrat co-worker who insisted that we had to give everyone the same medical care. IOW, it's unfair that Bill Gates gets better medical care than the homeless. I bet monkeys are smarter than that.
It's more complex than that. Why not take the lesser payment, then grab a grape from one of the others? Instead of that, they just refuse to accept anything. Very peculiar.
1) Keep taking the formerly acceptable deal, or
2) Refuse it.
Allowing stealing and fighting directly over food would pose experimental confounds.
It's not clear just how desirable cucumbers ever were. It may be that the monkeys didn't really care for them all that much, but they were the only game in town. So I don't know how much it really tells us if they now refuse them, knowing something they prefer is being made available. Too bad they can't talk.
Obviously, the monkey was following the union rules. Nobody needs to work for peanuts(or cukes) when the contract minimum wage is grapes.
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