March 11, 2025 – Andy is in OurLittleCorner today
My Aversion to Disadvantageous Inequity: A Morality Tale (sort of)
I’ve mentioned previously that my mom created a journal of vignettes about her life experiences to share with her children and grandchildren. While going through that journal the other day I came across a story that struck a nerve. In it she relates the time back in 1950 when my older sister, Helen, and I had to stay with our aunt and uncle and their three boys – Hugh, Jan, and Eric – for several weeks while our father was undergoing some complicated surgery. The part I recall most was when our mom finally came to bring us home and she brought each of my three younger cousins a little mesh bag of gold-covered chocolate coins – but none for me. I was crushed.
Although “crushed” may be a bit melodramatic for how I felt, I clearly recall my pangs of disappointment (or was it jealousy?) for not getting any candy coins. Perhaps “conflicted” would be a more accurate way of putting it. On the one hand, I was old enough to understand that I should have been very happy to see my mom after all that time and to learn that our father’s surgery went well. But there was something provoking about those stupid gold coins. You might say that they trumped the better angels of my nature. I tried to put on a good face, but down deep I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was somehow unfair.
Reliving this episode from my childhood got me to wondering how and when we gain a sense of fairness in life. According to a recent article (“Do Animals Have a Sense of Fairness?“) posted on UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Magazine web site, fairness as a topic has inspired much research on both human and non-human subjects. A core question underlying much of this research is whether or not a sense of fairness is a cultural artifact or if it is a part of our genetic makeup. Of course, because this is serious research stuff, it’s not sufficient to use layperson terms such as “fairness” or “jealousy” – the scientifically correct term is Disadvantageous-Inequity Aversion (DIA for short).
Interest in the possibility of DIA in nonhuman animals has been spurred by some evolutionary psychologists who argue that this supposedly exclusive human trait may predate the appearance of Homo sapiens. Indeed, a number of recent studies have concluded that certain animals express what we humans might recognize as jealousy. A widely known example of such non-human DIA behavior involves a 2003 experiment using as subjects two Capuchin monkeys in adjoining cages. One of the monkeys is rewarded for a simple task with a piece of cucumber and the other rewarded for the same simple task with a much more prized grape (think gold-covered chocolate coin!). The cucumber recipient reacts quite dramatically to the disparity in rewards. A video of this episode went viral on the Internet. I’ve included below a short clip from a 2014 TED talk by primatologist Frans de Waal who walks us through that viral video. Check it out.
The Capuchin monkey that flings the cucumber reward at the researcher appears to be expressing a sense of moral indignation over the neighboring Capuchin’s “unfair” grape reward. While this interpretation makes sense at face value, findings from a 2024 study published by a UC Berkeley research team raise some questions about such a conclusion. Based on an analysis of 60,000 observations across 18 animal species, the team found no support for what earlier studies had been reporting as DIA. The lead author suggests that previous research may have been biased by anthropomorphic projections rather than figuring out what was really going on in monkeys’ heads. For example, they found that when a monkey was rewarded with a cucumber while a grape was put in an empty neighboring cage the same agitated response would occur. Evidently, for the monkey this was about personal preferences rather than a social justice issue.
You’re undoubtedly wondering what this all has to do with my chocolate-coin pique back in 1950. When I first saw that cucumber-flinging video incident I could totally empathize with that grape-snubbed monkey. Although I don’t recall exactly what was going through my mind those many years ago, I probably wanted to act out like that Capuchin did. The only difference was that I suppressed that urge. In a way this was an indication that by the age of seven I was developing the valuable social skill of controlling my impulses. But is that necessarily a good thing?
We’ve all heard that suppressing emotions can cause psychological issues down the road. Just the act of writing about my childhood snit has lifted some of the weight of the guilt that I have felt for all of these years. This makes me wonder if the Capuchin approach would have been a “healthier” way to have dealt with my candy-coin trauma. I could have grabbed the mesh sack of coins from Eric (the youngest cousin and the least likely to retaliate) and flung it out the window. Even if that Capuchin rant we saw in the video technically wasn’t DIA induced, I doubt if that monkey suffered any long-term resentment or guilt. But before officially recommending such a strategy I would like to see a replication of the Capuchin experiment substituting gold-covered chocolate coins for grapes. You’ll be the first to know if I run across such a study.
Hi Andy
Good essay.
Are you familiar with David Horowitz? He was a red diaper baby who went on to work at Rampants Magazine, a new left publication from the sixties. For various reasons, he became disillusioned with leftist politics and became a Republican.
Anyway, he’s a prolific author, and in his autobiographical “Radical Son,” he discussed inequality. I didn’t remember the exact quote, so I asked GROK.
“One relevant passage comes from his reflections on childhood and social dynamics. On page 39 of the hardcover edition, he writes: “The playground was a brutal testing ground, where strength and cunning prevailed, and the weak were quickly sorted out. It was a lesson in the real world that no classroom could teach.”
This isn’t an exact match to your phrasing, but it captures the essence: a playground as a microcosm where natural differences—physical, mental, or social—become apparent, undermining notions of inherent equality. Horowitz uses such observations to critique the Marxist and progressive ideals he once held, suggesting that inequality is a visible truth even in childhood.”
Not bad. It only took a few seconds to get the answer.
I’m impressed that you are able to expand my modest question of fairness to something with much more depth. If it weren’t for the “blessed are the meek” Beatitude, I would consider myself to be dogfood on the playground side of myself. I recall Horowitz from Ramparts (in the good old days) but didn’t know much about him until now. He certainly had an interesting philosophical/political evolution. Although no relation that I know of, I did have the opportunity many years ago to hear Irving Horowitz present the keynote paper at the American Sociological Society meetings. The discussant made a very minor suggestion to Horowitz about a possible error in his paper to which Horowitz responded (which I will never forget), “They say that standing on the shoulders of giants we can see even more… but in this case a cockroach in my hair can see nothing.” The audience was stunned.
Maybe you could change the name of “Our Little Corner” so that it felt equal to “the blog”.
such as “Our Famous Playground of Ideas”. You could probably come up with something better than that…..
Thanks for the suggestion Sophie. I hadn’t considered the impact of the name of the blog and will give your idea some thought. One problem with such a name change would be that it could jeopardize my hard-earned martyr status.