shminux comments on Why Don't People Help Others More? - Less Wrong

36 Post author: peter_hurford 13 August 2012 11:34PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (85)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: shminux 16 August 2012 07:11:42PM *  1 point [-]

It's clear that people value fairness, even to their own detriment. In a game called "the Ultimatum Game", one participant is given a sum of money by the researcher, say $10, and told they can split this money with an anonymous second player in any proportion they choose

The catch here is that it is free money. If the participants had to work for it, even a little bit, I bet that the sharing level would drop significantly, to the lowest level they think they can get away with, whatever it might be.

Comment author: Kindly 16 August 2012 10:01:43PM 1 point [-]

On the other hand, if the second player had to work for the money, I bet that her threshold for rejecting the offer would be higher. Especially if the participants were told that they had done about the same amount of work.