Emotions, norms, and the genealogy of fairness

Politics, Philosophy and Economics

Volumn 9, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 275-296

  Nichols, Shaun ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA   (United States)

Author keywords

Bicchieri; Envy; Moralization; Rozin; Sperber; Status; Ultimatum game

Indexed keywords

EID: 77955879892     PISSN: 1470594X     EISSN: 17413060     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1470594X09345478     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. R. James Blair, 'A Cognitive Developmental Approach to Morality: Investigating the Psychopath', Cognition 57 (1995): 1-29
2. Joshua Greene and Jonathan Haidt, 'How (and Where) Does Moral Judgment Work?' Trends in Cognitive Science 6 (2002): 517-23
3. Shaun Nichols, Sentimental Rules (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)
4. Jesse Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
5. For contrasting views, see Bryce Huebner, Susan Dwyer and Marc Hauser, 'The Role of Emotion in Moral Psychology', Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13 (2008): 1-6
6. John Mikhail, 'Universal Moral Grammar: Theory, Evidence and the Future', Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11 (2007): 143-52.
7. Werner Güth, Rolf Schmittberger and Bernd Schwarze, 'An Experimental Analysis of Ultimatum Bargaining', Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 3 (1982): 367-88.
8. Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Herb Gintis, Colin Camerer and Ernst Fehr, Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
9. Cristina Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 101.
10. Ibid., pp. 117 ff.
11. Ibid., p. 74.
12. For simplicity, I will typically speak as if there is a single equal-division norm that has fairly broad scope, subsuming cases in which experimental subjects are asked to divide a pot of money (as in the Ultimatum game) as well as natural cases in which a person is given a good and told to share it. Alternatively, one might want to maintain that there are really multiple equal-division norms that are more situation specific.
13. Bicchieri's account is phrased in terms of conditional 'preferences'. But the term 'preference' typically implies a rank ordering (for example, I prefer vanilla over chocolate), and in Bicchieri's account we are not given anything like a rank ordering. (I owe this observation to Jerry Gaus.) I take it that what Bicchieri has in mind by 'preference' is something like desire or liking, which can be invoked without specifying a ranking. This interpretation is supported by the fact that Bicchieri uses the label 'preference for fairness' to describe Fehr and Schmidt's model, which they explicitly frame in terms of an aversion (a disliking) for inequitable outcomes. (See Ernst Fehr and Klaus Schmidt, ';A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation', Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (1999): 820.) In this article, I will use ';desire' or ';liking' in place of Bicchieri's ';preference'.
14. Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 20.
15. Ibid., p. 22, emphasis in the original.
16. One critical detail to fill in here is why (or if) communities are better off if people follow the equal-division norm
17. (see ibid., pp. 214-5). But I will set that issue aside.
18. Cristina Bicchieri and Erte Xiao, 'Do the Right Thing: But Only if Others Do So', Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 22 (2008): 191-208.
19. Although it does not affect the present discussion, I should note that my presentation here is a simplification of Bicchieri's view. For she charts an additional path to conformity - I might conform to the equal-division norm because others prefer me to conform and will sanction my behavior if I do not. (See Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 11.)
20. This hypothesis might be explored by seeing whether lowering the stakes in a Dictator game would make people come closer to equal division. We know that in standard Dictator games, using at least US$10, the mean allocation is only 20 percent. (See Robert Forsythe, Joel Horowitz, N.E. Savin and Martin Sefton, ';Fairness in Simple Bargaining Experiments', Games and Economic Behavior 6 (1994): 347-69.)
21. For college students, US$10 is not a trivial amount of money, and it is possible that if the stakes were lower, we would see a closer approximation of equal division. As Bicchieri notes, even though the benevolent person would rather be the sucker than the cheat, that preference would be cost sensitive. See Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 18.
22. Bibb Latane and John Darley, 'Group Inhibition of Bystander Intervention in Emergencies', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 10 (1968): 215-21.
23. This is perhaps an instance of the phenomenon of 'information influence' discussed by Bicchieri. In such cases, she writes, 'we take "what most people do" to clarify reality'. (See Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 64.)
24. Experiments on social conformity plausibly illustrate this phenomenon. Notoriously, subjects can be made to adjust their (avowed) opinion of whether two lines differ in length if they first hear several people say that the lines are of the same length. See Solomon Asch, Social Psychology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1952). One natural interpretation of this is that many of the subjects adjust their opinion because they take the other group members to be in a position to know the truth.
25. As Bicchieri notes, the Dictator game presents a novel and ambiguous situation - it is not clear which norm, if any, is supposed to apply. (See Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 126.)
26. If it is a sharing game, then the equal-division norm would apply. But if I learn that most players do not divide equally, then that is reason to think that it is not a sharing game. (Importantly, the standard formulations of the Dictator game do not include the word 'share' in the instructions. Rather, the instructions are phrased in the neutral vocabulary of 'dividing'.)
27. See, for example, Paul Van Lange, 'The Pursuit of Joint Outcomes and Equality in Outcomes', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (1999): 337-49
28. Michael Haselhuhn and Barbara Mellers, 'Emotions and Cooperation in Economic Games', Cognitive Brain Research 23 (2005): 24-33.
29. Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 125.
30. Sally Blount, 'When Social Outcomes Aren't Fair: The Effect of Causal Attributions on Preferences', Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 63 (1995): 131-44.
31. Alan Sanfey, James Rilling, Jessica Aronson, Leigh Nystrom and Jonathan Cohen, 'The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game', Science 300 (2003): 1755-8
32. Mascha van't Wout, Rene Kahn, Alan Sanfey and Andre Aleman, 'Affective State and Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game', Experimental Brain Research 169 (2006): 566.
33. Sanfey et al., ';The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game', p. 1757, Figure 2, D.
34. Presumably, this is not a simple inequality aversion, however, but rather, an aversion to unequal division in certain situations, such as that of the Ultimatum game. One could easily test this by seeing whether the elevated insula activation would occur under a differ frame, one in which we would not expect the equal-division norm to be activated. For instance, if the Ultimatum game were framed explicitly as a 'tipping game', in which the Proposer is designated as the 'tipper', then an inequitable split of 20/80 would likely not be regarded as a norm violation. So, if we found that in such a game there was no elevated insula activation that would give some reason to doubt that the reactions to computers derived from a simple aversion to inequality.
35. Kristina Olson and Elizabeth Spelke, 'Foundations of Cooperation in Young Children', Cognition 108 (2008): 228.
36. William Damon, The Social World of the Child (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1977), p. 81.
37. Ibid., p. 85.
38. This is akin to Carey and Spelke's idea that the young child has a certain body of core knowledge that persists unrevised into adulthood. (See, for example, Susan Carey and Elizabeth Spelke, ';Science and Core Knowledge', Philosophy of Science 63 (1996): 515-33.) However, I am not assuming that the child's knowledge of the equal-division norm is innate, as Carey and Spelke do for their standard cases of core knowledge. Rather, I am just adopting their idea that the early system persists.
39. Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 21.
40. Dan Sperber, Explaining Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
41. Nichols, Sentimental Rules.
42. See, for example, Richard Lazarus, Emotion and Adaptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 254.
43. A natural objection to this proposal is that the person who benefits by flouting equal division presumably has a positive experience. Negative reactions of envy might offer support to the equal-division norm, but complementary positive reactions would seem to operate against it. It might look like this is a wash. However, it remains possible that envy is a more powerful reaction. Indeed, this seems at least somewhat plausible given the familiar psychological fact that losses loom larger than gains for most people.
44. Of course, a judgment of unfairness might aggravate the feeling of envy. But the point here is that one can feel envy even while not regarding an outcome as unfair; also, one might regard something as unfair without feeling envy, for instance, when a third party observes a disproportionate split.
45. Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, pp. 43, 96.
46. Paul Rozin, ';Moralization', in Morality and Health, edited by Allan Brandt and Paul Rozin (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 380.
47. Paul Rozin and Leher Singh, 'The Moralization of Cigarette Smoking in America', Journal of Consumer Psychology 8 (1999): 328.
48. Paul Rozin, Maureen Markwith and Caryn Stoess, 'Moralization: Becoming a Vegetarian, the Conversion of Preferences into Values and the Recruitment of Disgust', Psychological Science 8 (1997): 71-2
49. Paul Rozin, 'The Process of Moralization', Psychological Science 10 (1999): 218.
50. Rozin and Singh, ';The Moralization of Cigarette Smoking in America', p. 323.
51. Rozin, ';The Process of Moralization', p. 219.
52. Richard Stein and Carol Nemeroff, 'Moral Overtones of Food: Judgments of Others Based on What They Eat', Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21 (1995): 480-90.
53. Rozin, ';Moralization', pp. 382, 383. Rozin goes on to say, 'An action that is performed in the service of a value is likely to be more resilient and durable. One reason for this is that moral linkage may encourage a hedonic shift. In other words, an object or activity that is aligned with one's moral views may come to be liked, and one that is in violation of such views may come to be disliked.
54. (See ibid., p. 383.)
55. Rozin, ';The Process of Moralization'.
56. I want to allow for the possibility that there was a time in our cultural past at which the equal-division norm was not moralized, but I do not mean to exclude the possibility that the norm was moralized from the start.
57. Sanfey et al., ';The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game', p. 1757, Figure 2, D.
58. Erte Xiao and Daniel Houser, 'Emotion Expression in Human Punishment Behavior', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102 (2005): 7398-401.
59. Tore Ellingsen and Magnus Johannesson, 'Anticipated Verbal Feedback Induces Altruistic Behavior', Evolution and Human Behavior 29 (2008): 100-5.
60. Dorit Kliemann, Liane Young, Jonathan Scholz and Rebecca Saxe, 'The Influence of Prior Record on Moral Judgment', Neuropsychologica 46 (2008): 2949-57.
61. The Trust game is different from the Ultimatum game in significant ways, so it will be important to make sure that the results do apply in the Ultimatum game as well.
62. Frank Marlowe, ';Dictators and Ultimatums in an Egalitarian Society of Hunter-Gatherers, the Hadza of Tanzania', in Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies, edited by Joseph Henrich et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 189. Something similar is true of the Turkana of Kenya (Pierre Lienard, personal communication).
63. See, for example, Robert Edgerton, Rules, Exceptions, and Social Order (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 45.
64. Rozin, ';The Process of Moralization', p. 220.
65. This kind of harm-based explanation also plausibly extends to explain how many taboos get moralized. For often the prohibited action is connected to supernaturally mediated bad consequences for the group, such as drought and disease.
66. Lazarus, Emotion and Adaptation
67. see also Dale Miller, 'Disrespect and the Experience of Injustice', Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001): 527-53.
68. Fritz Heider, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (New York: Wiley, 1958), pp. 267-8
69. see also Tom Tyler, 'Psychological Models of the Justice Motive', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67 (1994): 850-63.
70. Philip Salzman, Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2008), pp. 105-6.
71. Joseph Berger, Morris Zelditch, Bo Anderson and Bernard Cohen, ';Structural Aspects of Distributive Justice: A Status Value Formulation', in Sociological Theories in Progress, edited by Joseph Berger et al. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1972), pp. 119-46
72. Richard Layard, 'Happiness and Public Policy: A Challenge to the Profession', The Economic Journal 116 (2006): C24-C33.
73. Pierre Lienard, personal communication.
74. As Bicchieri points out, there is work indicating that allocation often depends on rank. See, respectively, Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 92
75. Alan Fiske, Structures of Social Life: The Four Elementary Forms of Human Relations (New York: Free Press, 1991).
76. Xiao and Houser, ';Emotion Expression in Human Punishment Behavior'.
77. Ellingsen and Johannesson, ';Anticipated Verbal Feedback'.
78. For instance, in small-scale societies such as the Turkana, there are typically groups of young men who have this kind of equal status.
79. By contrast, even though giving a bad tip is likely to be perceived as disrespectful, there are ready excuses for under-tipping. Most familiarly, one can claim that the service itself was not worth the expected tip.
80. Pierre Lienard, personal communication
81. see also Pierre Lienard and Francois Anselmo, ';The Social Construction of Emotions: Gratification and Gratitude among the Turkana and Nyangatom of East Africa', in At the Fringes of Modernity, edited by Steven Van Wolputte and Gustaaf Verswijver (Tervuren: Royal Museum for Central Africa, 2005), pp. 150-98.
82. Interestingly, among the Machiguenga, who make and accept low offers in Ultimatum games, status plays a minimal role (Joe Henrich, personal communication). If it is true that the Machiguenga do not have an equal-division norm, this might be because the Machiguenga lack the kinds of status concerns that play a role in securing equal-division norms.