Did Culture, Not Biology, Develop Humanity's Sense of Fair Play? - 0 views
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in a new study published in Science, scientists studying groups of people from different societies have suggested that our sense of fairness may depend on the type of society we live in.
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Lead researcher Joseph Henrich observed that members of smaller groups were unwilling to punish selfish behavior and were willing to keep much of the money for themselves. This may be because smaller communities lack the social norms or informal institutions like markets and religion, causing them to have narrower concepts of fairness.
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However critics argue that in the absence of cultural context, the tests seem weak. Terming the games an “artificial situation,” evolutionary game theorists Martin Nowak and David Rand pointed out that college students are “used to [such] concepts and hunter-gatherers aren’t. Who knows how they’re understanding the game?”