From
an early age we are told to share and be fair. Indeed we get upset if we
receive short measure. Even monkeys get awkward if they are not getting an
equal share of goodies with a colleague in captivity. Of course, this is under
the supervision of a psychologist who is responsible for the inequity. In the
wild, things may be different.
The
psychologists are back testing humans and the device this time is a variant of
the Ultimatum Game. In this game, the players are playing for a share of 10
coins. One player makes the other one of two offers and the other player has to
decide to take it or leave it. If they take it, they get their share of the
split, but if they reject it, neither gets anything.
The
player making the offer is allocated one of these combinations to offer from: an 8:2 split
with a 5:5 split, 8:2 with 2:8, 8:2 with 10:0 and an 8:2 with an 8:2. Each
player only plays another once so there is no chance of payback. The aim of the
game is for a winner to emerge as the person with the most cash.
Radke
et al used a variant of this where their 50 human lab rats were under the
impression that some of the offers were under computer control and the other
under the control of another player (1). In fact, the computer made all the
offers.
Results?
Well, when the contestants thought that another player was making an
unfair offer, they were more likely to reject it than if they thought it was
the computer, thus inflicting some degree of punishment of the proposer. .(Punishing the computer didn’t seem to be a
particularly good idea.) Of course both would suffer, but the proposer would
loose more. This meant that the receiver would make a choice with the intention
of the other player in mind.
The
other point that the authors were trying to tease out was did the receivers
take the context into account? For example, if they had an 8:2 split when they knew that the proposer had opted not to go for the 5:5 split, were they more or
less likely to accept it when the other possibility had been a 10:0. Well, you
guessed it, if they thought the proposer was offering the best deal, they were
more likely to take it than if the context of the choice would have been less
favorable to the proposer.
In
the end everybody got an equal payout of €10, so I guess nobody really
won. It’s good to see that the concept of fairness is still alive and well with
23-year old students. Hopefully they won’t loose it as the get immersed in the
business world.
