Fairness

Think of a time when you were treated unfairly. Really cast your mind back to that time and how you felt. Maybe your teeth clenched. Maybe your cheeks burned. Makes you mad just thinking about it, doesn’t it? Recently published research suggests that the strong objection we have to being treated unequally is very deeply seated in our evolution. Researchers found that an objection to getting less is an evolutionary response that protects members of cooperative species from others of their kind doing better at their expense. Dr. Sarah Brosnan of Georgia State’s departments of Psychology and Philosophy, the Neuroscience Institute and the Language Research Center and colleague Dr. Frans de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and the Psychology Department at Emory University published their first study of primate reaction to being treated unfairly, “Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay” in 2003, in which they found that capuchin monkeys have a freakout if they see other monkeys get a bigger reward for the same task. Over the next 10