Human sense of fairness evolved to favor long-term cooperation, primate study suggests

Fairness is a social ideal that cannot be measured, so to understand the evolution of fairness in humans, Dr. Sarah Brosnan of Georgia State's departments of Psychology and Philosophy, the Neuroscience Institute and the Language Research Center, has spent the last decade studying behavioral responses to equal versus unequal reward division in other primates.
In their paper, published in the journal Science, she and colleague Dr. Frans de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and the Psychology Department at Emory University, reviewed literature from their own research regarding responses to inequity in primates, as well as studies from other researchers. Although fairness is central to humans, it was unknown how this arose. Brosnan and de Waal hypothesize that it evolved, and therefore elements of it can be seen in other species.
"This sense of fairness is the basis of lots of things in human society, from wage discrimination to international politics," Brosnan said. "What we're interested in is why humans aren't happy with what we have, even if it's good enough, if someone else has more. What we hypothesize is that this matters because evolution is relative. If you are cooperating with someone who takes more of the benefits accrued, they will do better than you, at your expense. Therefore, we began to explore whether responses to inequity were common in other cooperative species."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140918141151.htm

interesting
Did you see the Study in Rats that suggest they have a very high sense of fairness too?
I think this clip is from it my connection is slow ATM so it is not loading properly


one of the experiments they gave them 3 treats after opening and the trapped rat always gave the the rat that freed them the extra treat.

veya_victaous wrote:interesting
Did you see the Study in Rats that suggest they have a very high sense of fairness too?
I think this clip is from it my connection is slow ATM so it is not loading properly


one of the experiments they gave them 3 treats after opening and the trapped rat always gave the the rat that freed them the extra treat.

I did Veya, and it is very interesting still this kind of work is very much in its infancy for understanding, so very interested to see what else can be learnt.

Afternoon folks. Am I right in thinking these findings and evaluation of animal behaviour bear out what I've been saying in other topics? That good moral behaviour, which surely stems from the above article, are natural, which ensures the survival of a group and ultimately the species.

Creationist often say that we evolutionists have no morals. You may recall that being said in other, past topics. This is nonsense. If we didn't lead good, honest lives, we would be snubbed or treated with contempt. Being good, nice, and careing about others, does often bring a reward of like kind. Yes, there are some who take advantage of other's willingness to help out, but we soon learn, albeit sometimes the hard way, to finally ignore such selfishness.