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Even monkeys know when they’re getting a bad deal, said primatologist Frans de Waal at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago on February 16th: “We found that our monkeys were sensitive to the distribution of rewards.”
Give two side-by-side monkeys a piece of cucumber for performing a simple task and there’s no problem. But if one sees his neighbor get a more desirable grape—“now grapes are far better than cucumber and the monkeys know that”—for doing the same thing, “they become agitated. They don’t like this experiment anymore, even though they get exactly the same food as before. But the partner is now getting grapes. And if you give the partner a grape without any task, then they really don’t like it anymore. So this is, I usually call it an egocentric sense of fairness, it’s like resentment or envy. It’s very similar actually to the response that we have currently to Wall Street bonuses. I always say we live in Cucumberland and they live in Grapeland, basically.”
—Steve Mirsky
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6 Comments
Add CommentIs this article about the monkeys that was running our past federal government? It sounded like this experiment was conducted on the GOP.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInjustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo simple even monkeys know it.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo simple even monkeys know it.
Perhaps you are lacking in intelligence or using government funds unproductively if you have to look at monkeys instead of yourself (read humans) to determine behavioral responces.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe technique of brain imaging is turning in a toy for scientists that are predisposed to make would- be science. That scientists apparently is using this technique like a fashionable item to demonstrate how their research is 'modern'. Notwithstanding the callowness of their works, they have sufficient brass to present their results with all seriousness. In that case the explications from the author of the 'scientific' work is overspilled of leftism, too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMay some principles from Confucius help
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