Today
we have a new slant on the games that are designed to examine people’s response
to unfair or fair play when playing the ultimatum game. You’ll recall that this
is the game where a “proposer” offers to split the change in his/her pocket with
you, the “responder”. If you accept, you get your share. If you reject the
offer the government takes the lot and you both loose out.
What
makes the game a test is that the offers may be “fair” (50:50, 40:60) or
“unfair” (30:70, 20:80 or 10:90). Those deep in game theories will know that
the winner of the group playing the game should take all offers as something is
better than nothing. Punishing someone who makes an unfair offer by turning
down 10% so that the proposer looses their 90% is letting emotion run over your
theoreticians logic.
The
latest twist that we have this week is from Takahashi et al whose study is
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (1). They took 20 young men and presented them
with a stacked ultimatum game whereby a pre-programmed computer and not the
other players made the offers to them.
But
that’s not all. They were all given a PET scan where the interest was focused
on the serotonin receptors in the Raphe nucleus (that’s at the top of the brain
stem.) And there’s more. They were all given a psychiatric assessment of their
personalities. Agreeableness or neurotic were the pigeonholes that their
personalities were shoehorned into.
To
put this together, low levels of serotonin meant the guys were honest and
trustful, that is generally agreeable. High levels meant that they were more
Machiavellian and consequently on the neurotic side.
What
are your prejudices, I wonder? Agreeable guys would just take the hits and
accept the offers, while our Machiavellian friends would do a bit of punishing
if it was only going to cost them a 10% offer, but would deny the proposer
their 90%, maybe?
Well,
no. The nice guys were more outraged at being short-changed and punished hard
because it was patently unfair. The Machiavellians just shrugged as it was just
business and what’s fairness got to do with business? Guess they’re destined
for Wall Street
