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Fairness hardwired in animal brains
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We have assumed long enough that only human beings understand fairness. For example, small children understand playing fair. When one child isn’t sharing, tears of injustice soon follow.
Adults do a pretty good job maintaining fairness for children. Then, in middle school, a child’s awareness expands to see the rest of the world, where fairness seems to be discarded like an old toy.
As children begin to understand inequality, their hair covers grieving eyes.
According to new research, the sense of fairness extends throughout the animal kingdom. Monkey and dog behavior providean evolutionary basis for fairness.
Watch the experiment below. First, monkeys cooperate fairly. Later, they were given treats in exchange for behavior, but one monkey got a dry biscuit while the other received a grape for the same behavior. It didn’t take long for the monkeys to understand the shaft. They first became agitated, and then stopped performing.
In a similar experiment done at the University of Vienna, dogs were tested. According to the NPR report, (listen), for each dog that responded to the “paw” command, one dog got a piece of bread, the other got nothing. As the experiment proceeded, the unrewarded dog tried new tricks, hoping to win a piece of bread. After that didn’t work, the dogs stopped performing. At first they avoided eye contact, as if they might be temped to obey. As the unfairness continued, however, dogs stared the trainer in the eye, refusing to obey.
It seems the lack of motivation of the American student and the American worker is all over the news. Attributed to laziness. However, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that "Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the US ... Highly paid employees received nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total US pay in 2007, the latest figures available."
Since we live in a culture that also displays these super rich on television, exposes Americans to the truth of income disparity. When some Americans receive better pay or reward for the same work, one might not expect a different outcome than giving the monkey a biscuit and giving the monkey a grape.
While some bemoan the decline of America’s work ethic, blaming immigrants or minorities, they should instead investigate the regulation of fair play in our system. The refs have stepped off the field. Lord of the Flies, anyone?
Thom Hartmann writes, highly paid CEO's "reflect the dysfunctional cultural (and Calvinist/Darwinian) belief that wealth is proof of goodness, and that that goodness then justifies taking more of the wealth.” If most of us don't agree, then the first response will be agitation, the second, a refusal to perform.
Want to get the economy going? Okay, then, realize it's part of our brain to want to play fair.
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