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There is a ton of evidence that people will give up individual gain in order to punish bad behaviour. The classic example is A gets given $100. He can choose to
by frossie 16y ago
There is a ton of evidence that people will give up individual gain in order to punish bad behaviour. The classic example is A gets given $100. He can choose to split it with B any way they like. B can accept the offered deal or refuse it, in which case nobody gets anything.
From simplistic game theory B should accept any offer (for example $99 for A, $1 for B) since B would have more money than he had before, which was nothing.
In practice with real people, anything below a 60-40 split gets rejected. People will indeed give up gain in order to punish anti-social behaviour. You don't have to think very long to see why we have evolved that way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game
With kids there is an even bigger factor in play - control. Normally, a child is not able to punish its sibling. Under this adult-administered scheme, the child actually has the power to send its sibling to its room! If you know how kids crave to be able to control their situation, you realise this must be like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny rolled into one.
A long-winded way to say: I am so not surprised, and mildly confused as to why the Freakonomics blog would be.
- d0mine 16y agoRelated: people are thiefs (on average) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQItB5uoiHI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQItB5uoiHI And btw, there are plenty of opportunities for a child to punish its sibling by manipulating an adult proxy or by themselves
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago>People will indeed give up gain in order to punish anti-social behaviour. You don't have to think very long to see why we have evolved that way. Whither free will? Some people will not give up personal gain to punish someone’s "anti-social behaviour", have they not also evolved? I think they just make a decision based on their point analysis.
- notahacker 16y agoIn this case it's not just about inflicting punishment on the sibling; it's also about not admitting fault or showing weakness (which saying sorry, and especially agreeing to say sorry first) appears to do. From the view of an angry kid, this is quite possibly worse than the punishment itself so the incentives are quite different from the classic prisoner's dilemma.
- throw_away 16y agothere was an interesting paper last year that said that refusal behavior at the ultimatum game was limited to westerners: http://www.nationalpost.com/Westerners+World+weird+ones/3427126/story.html http://www.nationalpost.com/Westerners+World+weird+ones/3427...
- Stormbringer 16y agoThat could have something to do with the relative size of the reward offered. If the average daily income in a country is $1, then any split of $100 is going to be significant. Add a couple of zeroes on to it to see how a 'westerner' might feel about it. Of course, the researchers aren't going to be able to offer too many people a split of 10 or 100 grand in a western city before they are stampeded to death... I know if I was in this game and they had to split 50 grand and 'only' offered me 10 grand I'd think a lot harder about turning it down than an 80:20 split of $100. On the other hand, I wonder if there is a link in western society between how good the person is at handling their own finances, and how even the split has to be before it would be accepted. I can think of a few examples of 'angry and poor because of it' people who would demand nothing less than 50:50, and would grumble even at that, they always believe that they deserve more than everyone else. It seems to me the very epitome of the poverty mentality.