Publication Date:
2007-10-06
Description:
Traditional models of economic decision-making assume that people are self-interested rational maximizers. Empirical research has demonstrated, however, that people will take into account the interests of others and are sensitive to norms of cooperation and fairness. In one of the most robust tests of this finding, the ultimatum game, individuals will reject a proposed division of a monetary windfall, at a cost to themselves, if they perceive it as unfair. Here we show that in an ultimatum game, humans' closest living relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), are rational maximizers and are not sensitive to fairness. These results support the hypothesis that other-regarding preferences and aversion to inequitable outcomes, which play key roles in human social organization, distinguish us from our closest living relatives.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Jensen, Keith -- Call, Josep -- Tomasello, Michael -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2007 Oct 5;318(5847):107-9.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103, Leipzig, Germany. jensen@eva.mpg.de〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17916736" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Choice Behavior
;
*Games, Experimental
;
Pan troglodytes/*psychology
;
*Social Behavior
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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