Source
Baumard, André & Sperber (2013), LIT-508 (Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36(1)), read in NOTE-407, with the commentaries and the authors’ Response.
What was actually shown
The argument (sect. 2.1.4). With freely chosen partners, nobody accepts less than they could get elsewhere, so biased splits are not evolutionarily stable. With equal outside options, payoff should be proportional to the resources each invests. The pairwise result is cited from André & Baumard (2011a). For effort and talent, “a formal proof will require further modeling” (p. 67).
Genuine fairness (sect. 2.2.1). Being chosen rewards a reliable, intrinsic sense of fairness over calculated fairness. This is a verbal argument.
Games, reread (sect. 3). When dictators earned the money, 79% and 70% gave nothing, against 19% and 15% when they had not (Cherry et al. 2002). When recipients earned it, modal offers matched what they had earned (Oxoby & Spraggon 2008). Modal dictator allocations matched contribution in 30 of 73 cases (Frohlich et al. 2004). About 80% found it fair to reward effort and 70% to reward talent (Cappelen et al. 2007). Framing a game as Maasai osotua, need-based mutual help, lowered transfers (Cronk 2007).
What could have come out otherwise. Earned and unearned money could have been divided alike. They were not.
What this does not say
- That the games test it. None was designed to separate mutualistic fairness from altruism or other accounts, and the article says such experiments “can and should be devised” (p. 77). Kirkby, Hinzen & Mikhail note that proportionality to “rights” is close to a truism.
- That everyone shares one sense of fairness. In controlled games with shared information, people split into egalitarians, meritocrats and libertarians (Cappelen & Tungodden’s commentary).
- That fairness is all of morality. The authors give two positions in the Response (R4) and do not settle them. On the broad one, kin care, coalitions, hierarchy and purity are moralized where fairness regulates them. On the narrow one, Sperber’s, they rest on other dispositions and are not moral proper.
- That the theory can fail on purity or loyalty. If what does not fit is not moral, it cannot (Machery & Stich; Ramlakhan & Brook).
Connections
- Rival. Morality-as-cooperation (THEORY-468) counts kin care, group loyalty and deference as moral domains. This account defines most of them out of morality proper (note 2, p. 60; R4.2). Both start from cooperation.
- The Response’s sketch of sexual restraint as fairness within monogamy (R4.4) is developed in Fitouchi, André & Baumard (THEORY-494).
- The record’s Equality–Proportionality split in the MFQ-2 (THEORY-613) separates the two kinds of fairness this account treats as one outcome of partner choice.