This is the first part of a mini-sequence of posts on zero-sum bias and the role that it plays in our world today.
One of the most pernicious of all human biases is zero-sum bias. A situation involving a collection of entities is zero-sum if one entity's gain is another's loss, whereas a situation is positive-sum if the entities involved can each achieve the best possible outcome by cooperating with one another. Zero-sum bias is the tendency to systematically assume that positive-sum situations are zero-sum situations. This bias is arguably the major obstacle to a Pareto-efficient society. As such, it's very important that we work to overcome this bias (both in ourselves and in broader society).
Here I'll place this bias in context and speculate on its origin.
It's always a little risky to engage in speculation about human evolution. We know so little about our ancestral environment that our mental images of it might be totally wrong. Nevertheless, the predictions of evolutionary speculation sometimes agree with empirical results, so it's not to be dismissed entirely. Also, the human mind has an easier time comprehending and remembering information when the information is embedded in a narrative, so that speculative stories can play a useful cognitive role even when wrong.
Anatomically modern humans appear to have emerged 200,000 years ago. In the context of human history, economic growth is a relatively recent discovery, only beginning in earnest several thousand years ago. The idea that it was possible to create wealth was probably foreign to our ancestors. In The Bottom Billion, former director of Development Research at the World bank speculates on the motivation of rebels in the poorest and slowest growing countries in the world who start civil wars (despite the fact that there's a high chance of being killed as a rebel and the fact that civil wars are usually damaging to the countries involved)
[In the portion of the developing world outside of the poorest and slowest growing countries...] growth rates may not sound sensational, but they are without precedent in history. They imply that children in these countries will grow up to have lives dramatically different from those of their parents. Even when people are still poor, these societies can be suffused with hope: time is on their side...If low income and slow growth make a country prone to civil war, it is reasonable to want to know why. There could be many explanations. My guess is that it is at least in part because low income means poverty and low growth mans hopelessness. Young men, who are the recruits for rebel armies, come pretty cheap in an environment of hopeless poverty ...if the reality of daily existence is otherwise awful, the chances of success do not have to be very high to be alluring. Even a small chance of the good life as a successful rebel becomes worth taking, despite the high risk of death, because the prospect of death is not so much worse than the prospect of life in poverty.
Neither the developed world nor the countries that Collier has in mind are genuinely good proxies to our ancestral environment, but like the people in the countries that Collier has in mind, our ancestors lived in contexts in which growth of resources was not happening. In such a context, the way that people acquire more resources for themselves is by taking other people's resources away. The ancient humans who survived and reproduced most successfully were those who had an intuitive sense that one entity's gain of resources can only come at the price of another entity's loss of resources. Iterate this story over thousands of generations of humans and you get modern humans with genetic disposition toward zero-sum thinking. This is where we come from.
For nearly all modern humans, the utility of zero-sum bias has lapsed. We now have very abundant evidence that the pie can grow bigger and that win-win opportunities abound. Both as individuals and as representatives of groups, modern humans have a tendency to fight over existing resources when they could be doing just as well or better by creating new resources that benefit others. Modern humans have an unprecedented opportunity to create a world of lasting prosperity. We should do our best to make the most of this opportunity by overcoming zero-sum bias.
What about the notion of a "negative sum" bias? I'm sure there is an appropriate technical term. The point being: what about the act of decreasing overall wealth as an act of personal enrichment, or of "relative improvement"?
For example, if I am in competition for a resource like grazing land, if I kill my neighbor's cattle it leaves more resources for my enrichment...my wealth might increase even if overall wealth decreases. (this is something of a corollary to "Tragedy of the Commons")
Alternately, if I am in competition for a resource like overall prestige, if I kill my neighbor's cattle, I have more relative to him, even if my wealth is unchanged and overall wealth is decreased.
As a third issue, in relation specifically to civil war, there is "revenge bias". Do we have more evolutionary bias towards summation or wealth issues? Or is it more about "give me my endorphines"? When we feel slighted, we will destroy things because the act of it makes us feel better.
Adrenaline trumps cortisol, is the evolutionary imperative here. Bad conditions, or bad actions, result in personal stress. Nothing relieves stress like violence, and revenge is especially sweet.
All three of these, in the end, are about "how good do you feel as a result of an act". Extrapolating it to economic considerations might be going too far. The evolutionary imperative is more simple: the specific short term acts have physiological results, which are more tangible (in an evolutionary sense) than long term "wealth issues" (even while the long term wealth issue can reinforce the short term act as well).
Heck, ever see a cat pee on a computer as an act of "rebellion"? Where's the summation of wealth there? The act of rebellion pre-exists the human condition.
Indeed, many of the of the 'zero sum games' we see in reality are actually more like negative sum games, as one man's gain is less than the other man's loss. However, I wouldn't say there's bias for that - in fact, it seems the negative sum is often not recognized. Or?
Regarding the revenge bias, one reason sometimes mentioned for the worth some cultures (past, and somewhat less, present) cultures put on revenge comes from our pastoral past, where protecting your prestige, your honor would be of crucial value, so other will not steal your sheep that you can... (read more)