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The problem is that you can't compare $100 purchasing power in USA with $100 in a remote village in Peru. Imagine that instead of $100, they give you $10.000 a

The problem is that you can't compare $100 purchasing power in USA with $100 in a remote village in Peru. Imagine that instead of $100, they give you $10.000 and things change. Would you refuse $1.000 free money even if someone earns $9.000?. Hardly. But this is exactly what is happening. With 1000 euros/month I live like a king in some parts of South America,like Argentina, but I live badly in Europe, the cost of living is way higher.

ginko 13y ago
> The stakes Henrich used in the game with the Machiguenga were not insubstantial—roughly equivalent to the few days’ wages they sometimes earned from episodic work with logging or oil companies. I don't think he offered $100. It was probably a much smaller amount.
- nmrm 13y ago
  > the few days’ wages they sometimes earned from episodic work with logging or oil companies. $100 is way less than "a few days' wages" for most people in the US/EU, right?
  - Jtsummers 13y ago
    For minimum wage workers that'd be almost 14 hours of labor in the US (maybe more since they still have to pay the payroll taxes like SS). Given that many of those jobs aren't full-time, that could be 2-4 days of labor for many of those workers. If I'm reading [1] correctly, some 30% of the population earned income at the equivalent of full-time minimum wage income ($15,080) or less. So not most, but certainly a significant number. And working some more numbers, $100 in a day (full-time shift of 8 hours) would be $12.50/hour. Which works out to $26,000/year. About 48% of individuals earned less than that in that year. Yet Another Edit (YAE): At $26k/year a single individual with no dependents wouldn't actually be making $100/day. Like the poorer minimum-wage earners, they'd be losing SS and Medicare taxes. At that income they're also paying income tax and not (necessarily) getting it all back (like the minimum-wage earners would). If my brain engages I'll work the numbers for a single individual to actually get to bring home $100/day (ignoring state income taxes). Note: I'm tired, may be misreading the intro block to the table, but this doesn't seem to be including the unemployed or those under the age of 15 and only those who report income (so those getting paid under the table aren't affecting the percentages). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...
    - nmrm 13y ago
      Alright. This also seems more in-line with the type of work the people involved in the study were doing (episodic). Thanks for the perspective.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    For most people for the whole EU, probably. For most people in every country, not really. Here in Portugal, $100 is about three days of an average wage (50th percentile, after taxes).
  - adventured 13y ago
    The median income in the US is $50,000. The average work week is 34.5 hours (per the OECD), or upwards of 40 according to other sources. $25 per hour is a reasonable baseline for the US average. So it's about four hours of work. The average tax rate is 18%, so it's more like 4.8 hours of work including taxes.
    - Jtsummers 13y ago
      That's the household median. When you combine/compare the data in [1] and [2] that median makes sense when you consider two income households. The individual median is around half that value (fits in the $25,000-27,999 bracket somewhere, assuming a uniform distribution across that range it'd be around $26,500). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...
- anon4 13y ago
  Still, I read his findings as having to do more about differences in attitude to money in particular, than about differences in core human psychology.
orting 13y ago
So the idea that scientific studies should include people that are not upper middle-class westerns, is wrong because of the purchasing power of $100? There is a link to the published paper in the article[1]. I have only skimmed it, but there are many different studies and findings. One I think is really interesting is this: "Research on IQ using analytical tools from behavioral genetics has long shown that IQ is highly heritable, and not particularly influenced by shared family environment (Dickens & Flynn 2001, Flynn 2007). However, recent work using 7‐year old twins drawn from a wide range of socioeconomic statuses, shows that contributions of genetic variation and shared environment varies dramatically from low to high SES children (Turkheimer et al. 2003). For high SES children, where environmental variability is negligible, genetic differences account for 70‐80% of the variation, with shared environment contributing less than 10%. For low SES children, where there is far more variability in environmental contributions to intelligence, genetic differences account for 0‐10% of the variance, with shared environment contributing about 60%. This raises the specter that much of what we think we have learned from behavioral genetics may be misleading, as the data are disproportionately influenced by WEIRD people, and their children (Nisbett 2009)." What they are arguing is that we have conducted science in a way where we have consistently sampled from a specific sub-population and used the results to generalise about the remaining sub-population. To me it sounds like they are on to something that could change many of the "givens" that are "known to be true". I recently saw a TED talk with Paul Johnson[2] where she discusses the problem that the sex of subjects in medical trials is often ignored leading to results that only holds for men or women. [1] http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_final02.pdf http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_fina... [2] https://www.ted.com/talks/paula_johnson_his_and_hers_healthcare https://www.ted.com/talks/paula_johnson_his_and_hers_healthc...
- vacri 13y ago
  Htsthbjig's point is that if the money doesn't mean much to you anyway, you're more likely to be punishing because you're not losing much. But if it means a lot to you, why punish a stranger when you're getting a significant amount of free money. To properly compare the cultural differences in the test, it would have to be done with the same level of purchasing power. That's not really stated one way or the other in the article. $100 goes a lot further in a developing country than a developed country, so if they were using the same dollar amount (I doubt they were), then it isn't a directly comparable study. For example: Make it $10. The stranger gives me a 1:9 split in their favour. Fuck 'em, I'm not going to lose any sleep over a dollar, and it's not worth my time to even collect the dollar. Now make it $10k. Hey, I could actually do something nice with $1k, even if the other person is being 'unfair'. The relative purchasing power of the money in the test is significant within cultures, let alone across cultures.
danielweber 13y ago
One of the reasons for trying the Ultimatum Game in poor villages is that you can see if the theory holds for high rewards, without spending $1,000 a pop to try it out in San Francisco.
- desmondmonster 13y ago
  The article doesn't mention that when this game is played with American children (using pieces of candy instead of money) they usually offer the least amount of candy and accept whatever's offered, say, a 9-1 split. This is seen as "rational" by both sides, because the giver should give as little as possible and the receiver should be happy to have something rather than nothing. This behavior changes as people grow up. As teenagers, people generally won't accept a split worse than 70/30, which implies that it's worth it to lose out on the 30 in order to send a message to the stingy giver. Also, men are more likely to engage in this sort of justice-driven behavior than women, which is all considered economically irrational. But when the stakes get very high they tend to outweigh people's ethical notions of fairness.

ginko 13y ago

> The stakes Henrich used in the game with the Machiguenga were not insubstantial—roughly equivalent to the few days’ wages they sometimes earned from episodic work with logging or oil companies. I don't think he offered $100. It was probably a much smaller amount.

nmrm 13y ago
> the few days’ wages they sometimes earned from episodic work with logging or oil companies. $100 is way less than "a few days' wages" for most people in the US/EU, right?
- Jtsummers 13y ago
  For minimum wage workers that'd be almost 14 hours of labor in the US (maybe more since they still have to pay the payroll taxes like SS). Given that many of those jobs aren't full-time, that could be 2-4 days of labor for many of those workers. If I'm reading [1] correctly, some 30% of the population earned income at the equivalent of full-time minimum wage income ($15,080) or less. So not most, but certainly a significant number. And working some more numbers, $100 in a day (full-time shift of 8 hours) would be $12.50/hour. Which works out to $26,000/year. About 48% of individuals earned less than that in that year. Yet Another Edit (YAE): At $26k/year a single individual with no dependents wouldn't actually be making $100/day. Like the poorer minimum-wage earners, they'd be losing SS and Medicare taxes. At that income they're also paying income tax and not (necessarily) getting it all back (like the minimum-wage earners would). If my brain engages I'll work the numbers for a single individual to actually get to bring home $100/day (ignoring state income taxes). Note: I'm tired, may be misreading the intro block to the table, but this doesn't seem to be including the unemployed or those under the age of 15 and only those who report income (so those getting paid under the table aren't affecting the percentages). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...
  - nmrm 13y ago
    Alright. This also seems more in-line with the type of work the people involved in the study were doing (episodic). Thanks for the perspective.
- icebraining 13y ago
  For most people for the whole EU, probably. For most people in every country, not really. Here in Portugal, $100 is about three days of an average wage (50th percentile, after taxes).
- adventured 13y ago
  The median income in the US is $50,000. The average work week is 34.5 hours (per the OECD), or upwards of 40 according to other sources. $25 per hour is a reasonable baseline for the US average. So it's about four hours of work. The average tax rate is 18%, so it's more like 4.8 hours of work including taxes.
  - Jtsummers 13y ago
    That's the household median. When you combine/compare the data in [1] and [2] that median makes sense when you consider two income households. The individual median is around half that value (fits in the $25,000-27,999 bracket somewhere, assuming a uniform distribution across that range it'd be around $26,500). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...
anon4 13y ago
Still, I read his findings as having to do more about differences in attitude to money in particular, than about differences in core human psychology.

orting 13y ago

So the idea that scientific studies should include people that are not upper middle-class westerns, is wrong because of the purchasing power of $100? There is a link to the published paper in the article[1]. I have only skimmed it, but there are many different studies and findings. One I think is really interesting is this: "Research on IQ using analytical tools from behavioral genetics has long shown that IQ is highly heritable, and not particularly influenced by shared family environment (Dickens & Flynn 2001, Flynn 2007). However, recent work using 7‐year old twins drawn from a wide range of socioeconomic statuses, shows that contributions of genetic variation and shared environment varies dramatically from low to high SES children (Turkheimer et al. 2003). For high SES children, where environmental variability is negligible, genetic differences account for 70‐80% of the variation, with shared environment contributing less than 10%. For low SES children, where there is far more variability in environmental contributions to intelligence, genetic differences account for 0‐10% of the variance, with shared environment contributing about 60%. This raises the specter that much of what we think we have learned from behavioral genetics may be misleading, as the data are disproportionately influenced by WEIRD people, and their children (Nisbett 2009)." What they are arguing is that we have conducted science in a way where we have consistently sampled from a specific sub-population and used the results to generalise about the remaining sub-population. To me it sounds like they are on to something that could change many of the "givens" that are "known to be true". I recently saw a TED talk with Paul Johnson[2] where she discusses the problem that the sex of subjects in medical trials is often ignored leading to results that only holds for men or women. [1] http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_final02.pdf http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_fina... [2] https://www.ted.com/talks/paula_johnson_his_and_hers_healthcare https://www.ted.com/talks/paula_johnson_his_and_hers_healthc...

vacri 13y ago
Htsthbjig's point is that if the money doesn't mean much to you anyway, you're more likely to be punishing because you're not losing much. But if it means a lot to you, why punish a stranger when you're getting a significant amount of free money. To properly compare the cultural differences in the test, it would have to be done with the same level of purchasing power. That's not really stated one way or the other in the article. $100 goes a lot further in a developing country than a developed country, so if they were using the same dollar amount (I doubt they were), then it isn't a directly comparable study. For example: Make it $10. The stranger gives me a 1:9 split in their favour. Fuck 'em, I'm not going to lose any sleep over a dollar, and it's not worth my time to even collect the dollar. Now make it $10k. Hey, I could actually do something nice with $1k, even if the other person is being 'unfair'. The relative purchasing power of the money in the test is significant within cultures, let alone across cultures.

danielweber 13y ago

One of the reasons for trying the Ultimatum Game in poor villages is that you can see if the theory holds for high rewards, without spending $1,000 a pop to try it out in San Francisco.

desmondmonster 13y ago
The article doesn't mention that when this game is played with American children (using pieces of candy instead of money) they usually offer the least amount of candy and accept whatever's offered, say, a 9-1 split. This is seen as "rational" by both sides, because the giver should give as little as possible and the receiver should be happy to have something rather than nothing. This behavior changes as people grow up. As teenagers, people generally won't accept a split worse than 70/30, which implies that it's worth it to lose out on the 30 in order to send a message to the stingy giver. Also, men are more likely to engage in this sort of justice-driven behavior than women, which is all considered economically irrational. But when the stakes get very high they tend to outweigh people's ethical notions of fairness.