Fairness

[Windblade]

This is from 2003, but I'm hoping people here haven't read it.

Monkeys show sense of justice
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor

Monkeys have a sense of justice. They will protest if they see another monkey get paid more for the same task.

Monkeys display sense of justice
Capuchins: Cooperative and tolerant
Researchers taught brown capuchin monkeys to swap tokens for food. Usually they were happy to exchange this "money" for cucumber.

But if they saw another monkey getting a grape - a more-liked food - they took offence. Some refused to work, others took the food and refused to eat it.

Scientists say this work suggests that human's sense of justice is inherited and not a social construct.

Differential reward experiment

The research was carried out at Emory University in the US, by Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal, and is reported in the journal Nature.

"I'm extremely interested in the evolution of cooperation," Sarah Brosnan told BBC News Online.

"One of the most interesting areas is the recent suggestion that human cooperation is made more effective by a sense of fairness."

She wanted to find out if the human sense of fairness is an evolved behaviour or a cultural construct - the result of society's rules.

So she and her colleagues devised an experiment using capuchin monkeys.

Experiment, Nature/Emory University
Aware what the other one gets
Sarah Brosnan said: "I chose the capuchin because they are very cooperative, and because they come from a very tolerant society.

"We designed a very simple experiment to see whether or not they react to differential rewards and efforts."

Capuchins like cucumber, but they like grapes even more. So a system was devised whereby pairs of capuchins were treated differently after completing the same task.

"They had never before been in any sort of situation where they were differentially rewarded," she said.

"We put pairs of capuchins side by side and one of them would get the cucumber as a reward for a task."

The partner sometimes got the same food reward but on other occasions got a grape, sometimes without even having to work for it."

'A highly unusual behaviour'

The response was dramatic, the researchers said.

"We were looking for a very objective reaction and we got one. They typically refused the task they were set," Sarah Brosnan said.

"The other half of the time they would complete the task but wouldn't take the reward. That is a highly unusual behaviour.

"Sometimes they ignored the reward, sometimes they took it and threw it down," she added.

Nature/Emory University
They never blamed their partner, say researchers
The researchers were not surprised that the monkeys showed a sense of fairness, but they were taken aback that they would turn down an otherwise acceptable reward.

"They never showed a reaction against their partner, they never blamed them," Sarah Brosnan said.

Commenting on the results, experts in the subject told BBC News Online that the idea of a long evolutionary history for a sense of fairness was an exciting one.

However, they added that they would like to see more research involving more than just the five subjects tested in the Nature study.

So does our instinctive feeling of fairness predate our species?

"It may well," Sarah Brosnan said, and further experiments are planned to see how extensive a sense of justice in the animal world is.

"We are currently repeating the study on chimpanzees, a great ape species, to learn something more about the evolutionary development of the sense of fairness.

"I suspect that there are other non-primate species with tolerant societies that will show the same behaviour."

Linkage

Thoughts?

[KingOfTheIsles]

Ah, yes, this article. Strangely enough, I just read it as well and was about to post about it, but it looks like you beat me to it. A few questions arise: Is this more ammunition for the theory of evolution? To see creatures that, according to the theory, are our close relatives display similar qualities? It seems a strange fact that we are just now finding out how similar we are when for a long time no one would admit it, and many of these creatures are on the brink of destruction.

[Wild Bill Kelso]

I believe the same thing has been observed in Chimpanzees as well. Oh yes, but animals have no sense of self as many claim .

[KingOfTheIsles]

Chimps have 'sense of fair play'
Chimpanzees display a similar sense of fairness to humans, one which is shaped by social relationships, experts claim.
They found that, like humans, chimps react to unfairness in various ways depending on their social situation.

Details of the study appear in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

A similar finding has been reported in capuchin monkeys, suggesting that a sense of fairness may have a long evolutionary history in primates.


Human decisions tend to be emotional and vary depending on the other people involved
Dr Sarah Brosnan, Yerkes National Primate Research Center

In the study by researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, US, chimps were paired to see how they would respond if one received a better reward than the other for doing the same amount of work.
When the pair came from a group that had known each other only a short time, the unfairly treated chimp responded negatively.

An animal rewarded with cucumbers - instead of highly prized grapes - "downed tools" and refused to do any more work.

But when the pair were from a close-knit social group that had bonded over a long period of time, unfairness was more likely to be tolerated.

Fair play award

The same reaction is seen in humans, who tend to react negatively to unfair situations with strangers, but not when they involve family members or friends.

"Human decisions tend to be emotional and vary depending on the other people involved," said Dr Sarah Brosnan, of Yerkes.


"Our finding in chimpanzees implies this variability in response is adaptive and emphasises there is not one best response for any given situation but rather it depends on the social environment at the time."
In a previous study, the same team identified a sense of fairness in capuchin monkeys.

"Identifying a sense of fairness in two, closely related non-human primate species implies it could have a long evolutionary history," Dr Brosnan explained.

"The capuchin responses as well as those of the chimpanzees - the most closely related species to humans - could represent stages in the evolution of the complex responses to inequity exhibited by humans and may help explain why we make certain decisions."

Human similarities

The scientists found chimps demonstrated "inequity aversion" when they were treated unfairly, but not when they received the better reward.

They seemed willing to take advantage of good luck while their partner lost out. The same response was seen in capuchins.

But even this selfish response mirrored human behaviour, said the researchers.

"Whereas people may prefer equity to any sort of inequity, advantageous inequity is typically preferred to disadvantageous inequity," the researchers write in Proceedings B.

"Most people tend to respond by psychological rather than material compensation - that is, justifying why they deserved a superior reward - and most people will choose to ignore information that could lead to a more fair outcome at a cost to the self."

Ah, I just noticed this article wasn't the one I was reading. This is it, and seems to offer further answers to the question.

Link

[GodEmperor Nicholas]

Frankly I didnt think this showed fairness--It showed an evolutionary tendancy for a creature to be greedy. Fairness would be the other ape giving some of there surplus food to the other.

NM

[morble]

NM--

Not fairness to each other--fairness in how a third party treats them, as individuals and in comparison to others. To throw your food down in outrage or disgust just because you think the other guy unfairly received something better is not a simple evolutionary or greedy response.