News Release

July 31, 2006

BSU Prof's Research Shows Societies Value Fairness

John Ziker  (Click to enlarge image)

Those who feel they are living in a world of greed and apathy can take heart. New research shows that people are basically hard-wired for altruism and fairness. Flying in the face of popular market theory that emphasizes self-interest, findings by a team of researchers including Boise State University anthropology professor John Ziker indicate that in diverse societies across the globe, people are not only willing to share fairly, but also to punish those who do not.

While these results are surprising, Ziker said, they are also very helpful when studying issues ranging from criminal behavior to how to get people to cooperate on the use and respect of common resources, such as the Boise Greenbelt or national forests.

The project, funded by the National Science Foundation, involved a series of controlled experiments in 15 societies on five continents, ranging from Tanzanian nomads and South American foragers to Siberian hunter-fishers and Missouri farmers. The study addressed one of what Science magazine identified in 2005 as the top 25 unanswered science questions: How did cooperative behavior evolve?

Titled “Costly Punishment Across Human Societies,” a recent summary article in Science describes how the researchers utilized three games to measure participants’ willingness to punish others they deem are acting unfairly. Each game involved the division of a sum of money equal to a day’s wage in that society; the first two games measured a willingness to punish selfishness; the third game was a measure of altruism.

In the first game, player 1 was asked to divide the sum with another anonymous player. If player 2 accepted the offer, they both received the amount agreed upon. If the amount offered was rejected by player 2, both walked away with nothing. In the second game, a third player was added. If player 3 felt the amount being offered was unfair, he or she could alter the portion each of the other two players received, but it would cost a share of his own take. In the final game, player 2 had to accept whatever player 1 offered.

Results across the board show that members of all societies are willing to punish unfairness, even at a personal cost, and that in some societies those perceptions of unfairness also extend to hyperfair offers, or those above 50 percent. And the higher the willingness to punish inequality in games 1 and 2, the greater the altruism shown in game 3.

Surprisingly, contrary to what researchers might have expected, the greatest emphasis on fairness was found in market economies and not in small-scale non-western societies. “There’s something about markets that teach people about fairness in these one-shot anonymous contexts,” Ziker said.
The project was developed to identify a common attribute of human psychology relevant to understanding cooperation in large groups. Ziker feels they accomplished that goal.

“This research shows that the mechanism that encourages altruism might be some form of costly punishment, as in withholding mutual benefits. All groups seem to be willing to take on a cost in order to promote fairness.”

Ziker was one of 13 researchers on the project from universities including Emory, Harvard, University of California-Davis, and Oxford.

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Contact: John Ziker, Department of Anthropology, (208) 426-2121, jziker@boisestate.edu 
Media Contact: Kathleen Craven, University Communications, (208) 426-3275, kcraven@boisestate.edu

Boise State University is the largest institution of higher education in Idaho with about 18,600 students and 2,200 faculty and staff. More than 190 undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and technical degrees are offered within eight colleges. A metropolitan university located in the capital city, Boise State is committed to life-enhancing research, teaching excellence and public service.


 

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Last reviewed on Wednesday, January 03, 2007