EUROPE: Fairness may be a key component of human civilization, allowing us to share valuable resources, but does it develop the same way, and at the same pace, across all human cultures?
A new Harvard study suggests that the answer may be no.
Using a simple game in which candy is distributed between two players, researchers found that children around the globe were quick to reject unfair deals, but in three countries – the U.S., Canada, and Uganda – children were also willing to reject deals unfair to others.
The study, described in a November 18 paper in Nature, led by led by Felix Warneken, the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences was co-authored by two former Harvard doctoral students – Peter Blake, now an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Boston University and Katie McAuliffe, an Assistant Professor at Boston College.
Other contributors to the study include Richard Wrangham, the Ruth B. Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology, Elizabeth Ross, co-master of Currier House, undergraduate students Aleah Bowie and Hurnan Vongsachang, Warneken lab manager Lauren Kleutsch, Karen Kramer, a faculty member at the University of Utah.
