 Robin Hood lives on in most of us. And the rich don’t
get richer—at least they don’t in laboratory games.
According to a behavioral economics experiment described in the
journal Nature,
people, it seems, have such a taste for equality that they will
spend their own money to give some to the poorest in their group
and to take it away from the richest. To test for this egalitarian
preference, UCSD political scientist James Fowler set up a random-income
game that removed self-interest and group cooperation as possible
motives.
A total of 120 volunteers, playing the game five times in groups
of four, were allocated different sums of money. Players were shown
what everyone got, and were presented with a choice to do nothing
and maintain the (unequal) status quo or to reduce their own real
takeaway pay in order to either increase or reduce another player’s
income. So that reputation and retribution would also not have
a role, the composition of the group was changed with each round
and players’ game histories did not follow them.
About three-quarters of the participants chose to play the game
in a way that had the overall effect of equalizing income. Those
who had received more than the group average were penalized most
frequently and most heavily. In contrast, those who started out
with considerably less than the others got sizeable gifts.
Real-world analogues for an egalitarian preference, Fowler says,
can be seen in the wide acceptance of a progressive tax and a social
welfare net. “If people didn’t have a taste for equality,” he
says, “then I would expect the world would be even more unequal
than it is.”
In related work, Fowler has shown that the game behavior correlates
with political
participation. Players who engage in costly giving and taking in
a game tend to also
be registered with any of the major political parties and to vote
at greater rates.
“The ‘Robin Hood impulse’ people display in
the lab,” Fowler says, “appears to translate into good
citizenship out in the world.”
— Inga Kiderra
|
