Posted on 10/05/2007 7:19:43 PM PDT by blam
Chimps don't mind being chumps in raisin game
19:53 04 October 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi
Unlike humans, chimpanzees will gladly accept a rotten deal from one another, suggesting they have a very different concept of fairness, a new study shows.
Experiments reveal that chimps are more focused on the immediate outcome of a transaction than the overall fairness of the deal.
By contrast, people generally place a huge emphasis on equity in deal brokering – so much so that it will cause them to make irrational economic decisions. This is demonstrated, for example, in what's known as the "ultimatum game".
In the game, a player can either accept or reject a portion of money that has been divided up by an anonymous partner. Players will often reject the deal – meaning neither person gets anything – when the deal represents too small a fraction of the total sum. A more economically rational decision would be to accept the free money, no matter how small it is.
"Humans are rather strange in the propensity to compare one's own outcomes with others," says Keith Jensen at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Just desserts
Jensen and colleagues decided to see how chimpanzees would behave in a simplified version of the same game. The researchers designed a setup whereby two chimps – separated by a Plexiglas divide – had to divvy up 10 raisins.
The first chimp would select how to split the raisins up by pulling on a length of rope attached to a tray covered with the fruit. The second chimp could accept the deal by pulling in a rod to bring the tray forward, thus allowing both animals to access their portions. If the second chimp refused the offer,
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
So, chimpanzees are democrats...
Actually I think they are saying that chimps make more rational economic decisions than humans. It is the idea that they are getting screwed and therefore no one should have anything that is at the root of their socialism. Democrats do their best to exploit this envy.
There, fixed that.
And thus the American steel industry was almost totally destroyed.
Did I beat the Tereasa Heinz Kerry comment?
Maybe the reason is that chimps aren’t as smart as human beings.
Or, maybe that the chimp would take two of the ten raisins in the first round, knowing that he would dole out the raisins in the second round;
And he’d get that bastard cheapskate the next time!!
FU - strong message to follow!
Let’s get some raisins and see what James Dobson does with them.
I’m JOKING. A little.
...and vice versa!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.