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Can Monkeys Teach Us About Fairness?

by Noah Carl
17 May 2025 5:00 PM
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In 2003, a study titled ‘Monkeys reject unequal pay’ was published in the leading journal Nature. The authors, Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal, reported evidence that capuchin monkeys exhibit ‘inequity aversion’. They conducted an experiment where pairs of monkeys exchanged tokens for rewards with a human. In one condition, both monkeys received cucumber (an inferior reward). In the other, one of the two monkeys received grapes (a superior reward). Brosnan and de Waal found that moneys were much more likely to reject the cucumber in the second condition, such as by throwing it at the human, after seeing their partner receive a grape.

The study soon became famous, and was taken to show that unfairness in economic transactions is so unnatural that even our primate cousins won’t stand for it. For example, the New York Times ran a piece titled ‘What the Monkeys Can Teach Humans About Making America Fairer’. And one of the study’s authors once compared his finding to “the Wall Street protests”.

As a brief aside, ‘inequity aversion’ seems like an inaccurate term to describe what the study found. If monkeys were really averse to inequity, the ones that received grapes should have also rejected their rewards. ‘Being-treated-unfairly aversion’ seems like a more accurate term, although that’s admittedly a bit of a mouthful.

Anyway, a new paper suggests that monkeys don’t have much to teach us about fairness after all. Oded Ritov and colleagues carried out a meta-analysis of 23 studies testing for ‘inequity aversion’ in non-human animals, including the original 2003 study. Importantly, they were able to meta-analyse the primary data from those studies rather than the reported estimates, allowing for greater rigour.

As the authors point out, ‘inequity aversion’ isn’t the only possible explanation for the original finding. Another is disappointment. Perhaps the monkeys who rejected the cucumber were angry that they received an inferior reward when a superior one was available, regardless of what their partner received. Fortunately, there’s a way to disentangle these two explanations: check whether monkeys are more likely to reject the cucumber when their partner is given a grape than when they are simply shown a grape. Some of the studies included in the meta-analysis actually did this.

So what did Ritov and colleagues find? In short, no evidence for ‘inequity aversion’ in non-human animals. When they compared rejection rates in ‘disappointment conditions’ to those in ‘inequity aversion conditions’, they found that they were higher in the former. In other words, merely drawing an animal’s attention to the superior reward has a bigger effect than showing another animal receive it. In fact, rejection rates in ‘inequity aversion conditions’ were not significantly different from those in control conditions (where there was no superior reward), which suggest that the original finding may have been a false positive.

Ristov and colleagues note that while some individual animals may exhibit ‘inequity aversion’, it does not appear to be a general phenomenon outside humans. On reflection, trying to draw lessons about fairness from a study on monkeys was kind of pointless: we already knew that humans dislike being treated unfairly.

Tags: FairnessMonkeysNew York Times

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6 Comments
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Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
2 months ago

I am surprised the authors of the study didn’t come to the conclusion that monkeys are natural Socialists. That is what they wanted to say, I think.

After all, it’s the Socialists who always whine about fairness. Unless it’s them personally, of course… then they expect and demand to be treated more fairly than everyone else.

Diversity, Equality, Inclusivity, anyone?

Last edited 2 months ago by Marcus Aurelius knew
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NeilParkin
NeilParkin
2 months ago
Reply to  Marcus Aurelius knew

As Dr. Thomas Sowell would say. “How much of my hard earned money should I give you before you consider it fair”

9
0
JXB
JXB
2 months ago
Reply to  NeilParkin

And also he said he couldn’t understand why it is greed for someone to want to keep the money they have earned, but not greed for somebody to take it from them to use for their own purposes.

Milton Friedman on Socialism: A and B sit down together to decide what C will do for D.

0
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 months ago

Same old story – whatever your personal idea of “fairness” is, feel free to treat others accordingly. Just don’t expect me to agree with your opinion or go along with your attempts to force me to conform to your standards.

4
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soundofreason
soundofreason
2 months ago

I presume the monkeys responded by sharing the grape and the cucumber and having half each out of a sense of fairness?

2
0
JXB
JXB
2 months ago

“…unfairness in economic transactions is so unnatural that even our primate cousins won’t stand for it.”

That only happens under Socialism and where Government is allegedly not Socialist but is, by Government intervention using tax, subsidy, regulation, legislation.

The whole point of free market capitalism is it is a natural process of voluntary exchange – built on barter trade as discovered by our ancestors in the Stone Age – wherein each party offers to the other something they value less for something they value more. The result is both parties come away with something of greater value to them which makes them both wealthier. Thus, wealth is only created by voluntary exchange.

Unless both parties are satisfied, the exchange is not made.

When Governments intervene, they make exchange unfair by imposing conditions which often result in one party gaining at the expense of the other and forcing the trade nontheless: eg minimum wage where those in work get more at the expense of those fired or not hired, diversity quotas where employers have to buy inferior goods, taxes for redistribution of wealth where the recipients give nothing in exchange, regulations which protect producer profits at the expense of consumers, Net Zero which is fraud.

Last edited 2 months ago by JXB
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