TVPUniversity
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2:39 · 378K views · Dec 15, 2012
Primatologist Frans de Waal shows an experiment in which capuchin monkeys refuse a reward after seeing a partner get a better one for the same task. It illustrates a sense of fairness in primates.
HN cites it in discussions of pay fairness and inequality as a short, funny demonstration of the fairness instinct.
4 comments from Hacker News
So, economic models are more or less based on, or at least constrained by, human psychology, right? Communism and socialism don't work because peoples' brains aren't wired to do lots of work for little or no or unequal reward. This isn't restricted to just people, either, it's been observed in monkeys ( [LINK] , this video -- it's a short video and pretty hilarious, worth a watch). At the same time, capitalism has serious flaws, also exploited by human psychology. Capitalism rewards not just work and the investment of capital but also greed and cheating. So, when looking for a new economic model, why not go back to psychology? Is it really true that most people don't want to work? There are some people who are content to receive a small stipend and spend their lives jut getting by without doing very much, but does that describe enough people to cause the collapse of a strong welfare society? I think we probably are headed towards a post-scarcity (or low-scarcity) economy. Food costs as percentage of income in the U.S. have fallen quite a bit just in the last thirty years ( [LINK] ). People are already going to find that it takes less real effort to survive ( [LINK] , posted earlier to HN: [LINK] ). A different economic model seems inevitable. Likewise, there will probably always be jobs that people don't want to do. Take oil rig work for example: hard, dangerous work, and it pays well, starting at the U.S. median wage for unskilled, inexperienced labor ( [LINK] ) and going up fr
Most people have a fairness instinct. The fairness instinct has been observed even in monkeys [0]. Given that most people also live within a social fabric, it is not too hard to imagine that most people have an instinct for a fair society. Alas, this is simply too vague of a definition, as it encompasses most religious/philosophical/political perspectives out there, on the left as well as on the right [gasp!]. The modern "social justice" movement has a number of very specific insistences, which align with a much smaller subset of perspectives than the umbrella "fair society" ideal would imply. I simply want to have someone sympathetic to the modern "social justice" movement to state some specifics on what they mean by "social justice". Looks like you're not the right person, no worries. I'll keep asking. One day someone will answer. [0] this video
That is very true. Indeed we know fairness is an innate value for us and all primates [1] Likewise "meritocracy" is a very imprecise word depending a lot on what you want to maximize and so, if not focusing on net benefit to humanity, could produce horrendous outcomes. Blindly maximizing wealth creation could be such a mistake but given how much good prosperity usually does for people, it looks like a good starting point. But I believe the article and I are referring to fairness among employees rather than employee vs employer (which is of course also interesting). Specifically, employees comparing wages would create quite appropriate outrage between employees when some individuals receive more for less work. And this regardless of how much or little of the company's produce goes to wages (a separate issue) [1] [LINK] or tldr; this video
My feeling is that the fairness effect comes into play strongly with open source distribution models. People are willing to play fairly (i.e. not re-distribute source code that's probably only a google search away anyway) when the author does the same. Frans De Waal demonstrates an experiment with Capuchin Monkeys showing this effect in action. [LINK] this video