HR Strange But True

Who’s Fairer to Each Other—Employees or Chimps?

You may think that the way your employees treat each other sometimes, you might as well have a bunch of wild animals in your workplace. But researchers at Emory and Georgia State universities have found that chimps might actually be fairer to each other than your employees are!

In a press release, researchers say the findings, available in an online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest a long evolutionary history of the human aversion to inequity, as well as a shared preference for fair outcomes by humans and apes.

According to first author Darby Proctor, “We used the ‘Ultimatum Game’ because it is the gold standard to determine the human sense of fairness. In the game, one individual needs to propose a reward division to another individual and then have that individual accept the proposition before both can obtain the rewards. Humans typically offer generous portions, such as 50 percent of the reward, to their partners, and that’s exactly what we recorded in our study with chimpanzees.”

To be fair to your employees, the study was done with chimps and human children. (Yes, we know what you are going to say.) However, the press release explains that both the chimpanzees and the children responded like adult humans typically do. If the partner’s cooperation was required, the chimpanzees and children split the rewards equally. However, with a passive partner, who had no chance to reject the offer, chimpanzees and children chose the selfish option.

The researches concluded that chimpanzees, that are highly cooperative in the wild, likely need to be sensitive to reward distributions in order to reap the benefits of cooperation. Tell that to your employees when it’s bonus time.

1 thought on “Who’s Fairer to Each Other—Employees or Chimps?”

  1. The picture of the chimp on this page may look like a smile but it is an expressions of acute anxiety and fear. Chimps should not be used for entertainment. They are too intelligent and when they are 8-10 years old, are too strong. They are too often trained using shock collars and other painful methods.

    Otherwise an interesting article, but please do not use chimps in anyway.

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