Nobody Gets Dessert
This game shows that people will pay real costs to punish unfairness, which explains a lot about sibling squabbles, workplaces and even countries.
- • A meta-analysis of 37 papers found proposers offer 40% of the prize on average, and about 16% of offers, roughly 1 in 6, are rejected.
- • Joseph Henrich and colleagues ran the game in 15 small-scale societies: the pure self-interest model failed in every one, and groups more tied into markets, where cooperation pays off day to day, were more generous.
- • With very large stakes, rejections of unfair offers fall towards zero (Andersen and colleagues, 2011), so pride really does have a price.
Would you turn down free dessert just to teach someone a lesson?
Setup: 10 small treats per pair, like raisins, crackers or squares of chocolate. About 5 minutes.
Rules: 1. Pair up. One person is the Splitter, one is the Decider. 2. The Splitter offers any split of the 10 treats. Nine for me, one for you? Your call. 3. The Decider says yes and you both eat, or no and NOBODY gets any. 4. One offer, one answer. No haggling. 5. Swap roles and play again.
The reveal. A cold, logical robot would accept any offer. One treat beats zero, right? Real people don't play like robots.
Researchers pooled 37 papers on this game. Splitters offered about 4 treats in 10 on average. Roughly 1 in 6 offers got rejected. Economists call rejecting unfair offers one of the most robust findings in their field.
Why say no? Step one: saying no costs you your share. Step two: but on a nine-to-one split, it costs the greedy Splitter nine times more. Step three: so no is a punishment you pay for. The more unfair the offer, the more people pay.
Then researchers took the game to 15 small communities around the world. The selfish robot was wrong in every single one. But generosity varied a lot. Where cooperating paid off in daily life, people offered more.
One catch. Make the prize huge, and people swallow unfair offers. Pride has a price.