Games - Inequity aversion

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	Games - Inequity aversion

Inequity aversion is the preference for 'fair rewards' and 'fairplay' in anthropology (in the sub-disciplines sociology, economics, sociobiology, psychology, evolutionary psychology, and primate behaviourology).

The brown capuchin inequitable payment experiment

In a famous capuchin monkey experiment in 2003, Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal showed that these social primates would prefer receiving nothing to receiving a reward awarded inequitably. The experiment went like this: # A group of female capuchins learned to pay for cucumber 'rewards' with rock 'tokens' from a researcher. # The exchange of token for reward was done in pairs of monkeys. # After receiving a cucumber slice for a rock the first monkey would witness the second passing her token to the researcher. # This second monkey would sometimes get the same thing (a cucumber slice) but would sometimes get something better (a grape). # The experiment monitored the first capuchin's response to the payment the next received.

Monkeys who saw their counterpart getting the same deal as they had done happily ate their cucumber. However, monkeys who witnessed the next monkey 'unjustly' receiving a better exchange rate for their rock had some dramatic negative reactions:

Cucumber recipients wouldn't eat when they saw another monkey get a grape.
They often refused to exchange their tokens for anything in future sessions.
They sometimes hurled the cucumber back at the researcher.

Most anthropologists agree that this research confirms the evolutionary (innate, biological) basis of a social sense of "fair play" in primates. (Others, including some evolutionary psychologists argue that the "Inequity aversion" is learned behaviour, but no-one questions that it is a universal capuchin response in socialized groups.) Aside from humans and brown capuchins, there is evidence for inequity aversion in chimpanzees. A similar importance on relative 'equity' and 'justice' as opposed to absolute utility has not been found in other biological orders. In 2004, Brosnan, De Waal and Schiff presented a highly quantative analysis of chimpanzee inequity aversion to the Royal Society, correlating the length of time a group has stayed together (social closeness), with its tolerance for inequitable payment for equal work. Although they were unable to identify the exact cause of the variations in IA response they found between groups, they speculate that if chimpanzee sibling had grown up sharing food, an inequitable division of food could easily be rectified. For instance, if capuchins always shared grapes with the rest of the group, then one member of that group might be happy to see another receive a grape, however ill-deserved.

Brosnan, et al. define the IA they found in chimpanzees: : "We demonstrate that, like capuchin monkeys, chimpanzees show a response to inequity of rewards that is based upon the partner receiving the reward rather than the presence of the reward alone."

Remarks on the brown capuchin experiment

Female capuchins were tested because they monitor equity, or fair treatment, more closely than the male, according to Brosnan.
A capuchin receiving a cucumber slice didn't take her anger out on a grape-receiving capuchin. Brosnan says that "they never blamed them". Based on the direction the cucumber was thrown in, it appears that the 'blame' for the inequity was (correctly) apportioned by the disgruntled capuchin on the scientists.
Although some individuals continued to work with the researchers after witnessing inequitable payment, "There were none that didn't care" according to Dr Brosnan.

IA in humans

Inequity aversion (IA) research in humans falls mostly into the disciple of economics, but, since it can create models of 'fair', 'cooperative', or 'noncooperative' behaviour it has also been classified as sociology.

In 1978 Walster & Berscheid's Equity: theory and research researched 'overcompensation' effects on the behaviour of people who feel 'guilty' or unhappy to have received an undeserved reward. (The capuchin experiment's grape-receiving monkeys apparently didn't react in a guilty way, perhaps because they were too busy eating their "highly prized" grape. However, it seems that humans are sensitive to injustices in their favour as well as against them.)

In 1999 Ernst Fehr and Klaus M. Schmidt defined IA as: :"Inequity aversion means that people resist inequitable outcomes; i.e., they are willing to give up some material payoff to move in the direction of more equitable outcomes".

According to Fehr & Schmidt, it was in this 1999 paper in The Quarterly Jornal of Economics that specified the modern form of economic Inequity aversion¹. They analysed two forms of IA:

Disadvantageous IA: (envy) disliking if another individual receives more than yourself.
Advantageous IA: (guilt) disliking if you receive more than another individual (i.e. overcompensation).

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