WEBVTT

00:00:01.174 --> 00:00:02.722
My first year in graduate school

00:00:02.746 --> 00:00:04.722
studying cooperation in monkeys,

00:00:04.746 --> 00:00:06.969
I spent a lot of time outside

00:00:06.993 --> 00:00:09.886
just watching our groups
of Capuchin monkeys interact.

00:00:10.230 --> 00:00:13.827
One afternoon, I was out back
feeding peanuts to one of our groups,

00:00:13.851 --> 00:00:16.876
which required distracting
one of our males, Ozzie, enough

00:00:16.900 --> 00:00:19.169
so that the other monkeys could get some.

00:00:19.193 --> 00:00:21.328
Ozzie loved peanuts,

00:00:21.352 --> 00:00:24.576
and he always tried to do
anything he could to grab some.

00:00:24.941 --> 00:00:26.575
On that day, however,

00:00:26.599 --> 00:00:29.996
he began trying to bring other things
from his enclosure to me

00:00:30.020 --> 00:00:32.673
and trade them with me
in order to get a peanut.

00:00:33.141 --> 00:00:34.625
Now Capuchins are smart,

00:00:34.649 --> 00:00:37.077
so this wasn't necessarily a surprise.

00:00:37.101 --> 00:00:38.879
But what was a surprise

00:00:38.903 --> 00:00:41.295
was that some of the things
that he was bringing me

00:00:41.319 --> 00:00:44.334
I was pretty sure he liked
better than peanuts.

00:00:44.827 --> 00:00:46.961
First, he brought me
a piece of monkey chow,

00:00:46.985 --> 00:00:48.588
which is like dried dog food,

00:00:48.612 --> 00:00:50.572
it was even made by Purina,

00:00:50.596 --> 00:00:51.760
and for a monkey,

00:00:51.784 --> 00:00:53.791
is about as worthless as it gets.

00:00:53.815 --> 00:00:56.260
Of course I didn't give him
a peanut for that.

00:00:56.284 --> 00:00:58.228
But he kept trying,

00:00:58.252 --> 00:01:01.581
and eventually he brought me
a quarter of an orange

00:01:01.605 --> 00:01:04.533
and tried to trade it
with me for a peanut.

00:01:05.009 --> 00:01:08.034
Now oranges are a valuable
monkey commodity,

00:01:08.058 --> 00:01:11.264
so this trade seemed, shall I say,
a little bit nuts?

00:01:11.621 --> 00:01:14.828
Now you may be wondering
how we know what monkeys prefer.

00:01:14.852 --> 00:01:16.177
Well, we ask them,

00:01:16.201 --> 00:01:18.439
by giving them a choice between two foods

00:01:18.463 --> 00:01:20.136
and seeing which one they pick.

00:01:20.160 --> 00:01:21.319
Generally speaking,

00:01:21.343 --> 00:01:23.188
their preferences are a lot like ours.

00:01:23.212 --> 00:01:25.569
The sweeter it is, the more they like it.

00:01:25.593 --> 00:01:28.347
So, much like humans prefer
cupcakes to kale,

00:01:28.371 --> 00:01:31.561
monkeys prefer fruits,
like oranges or grapes,

00:01:31.585 --> 00:01:33.236
to vegetables like cucumbers

00:01:33.260 --> 00:01:35.458
and all of this to monkey chow.

00:01:35.831 --> 00:01:37.514
And peanuts are not bad.

00:01:37.538 --> 00:01:41.219
However, they definitely don't prefer them
to a chunk of orange.

00:01:41.243 --> 00:01:44.701
So when Ozzie tried to trade
a quarter of an orange for a peanut,

00:01:44.725 --> 00:01:46.058
it was a surprise

00:01:46.082 --> 00:01:47.868
and I began to wonder

00:01:47.892 --> 00:01:50.066
if he suddenly wanted that peanut

00:01:50.090 --> 00:01:52.939
because everybody else
in his group was getting one.

00:01:53.391 --> 00:01:56.292
In case you're wondering,
I did give Ozzie his peanut.

00:01:56.316 --> 00:01:58.983
But then I went straight
to my graduate adviser,

00:01:59.007 --> 00:02:00.165
Frans de Waal,

00:02:00.189 --> 00:02:02.149
and we began to design a study

00:02:02.173 --> 00:02:04.292
to see how the monkeys would respond

00:02:04.316 --> 00:02:08.133
when somebody else in their group
got a better reward than they did

00:02:08.157 --> 00:02:10.132
for doing the same work.

00:02:10.506 --> 00:02:12.474
It was a very simple study.

00:02:12.498 --> 00:02:14.462
We took two monkeys from the same group

00:02:14.486 --> 00:02:16.331
and had them sit side by side,

00:02:16.355 --> 00:02:17.855
and they would do a task,

00:02:17.879 --> 00:02:19.950
which was trading a token with me,

00:02:19.974 --> 00:02:22.506
and if they did so successfully,

00:02:22.530 --> 00:02:24.045
they got a reward.

00:02:24.069 --> 00:02:27.736
The catch was that monkey
always got a piece of cucumber,

00:02:27.760 --> 00:02:30.625
and the other monkey
sometimes got a piece of cucumber,

00:02:30.649 --> 00:02:32.513
but sometimes got a grape.

00:02:32.537 --> 00:02:33.696
And if you'll recall,

00:02:33.720 --> 00:02:36.188
grapes are much preferred to cucumbers

00:02:36.212 --> 00:02:38.426
on the Capuchin monkey hierarchy.

00:02:38.450 --> 00:02:40.267
These are two of my Capuchin monkeys.

00:02:40.291 --> 00:02:42.934
Winter, on the right,
is trading for a grape,

00:02:42.958 --> 00:02:46.021
and Lance on the left,
is trading for a cucumber.

00:02:46.045 --> 00:02:49.426
You can see that she --
and yes, Lance is actually a female --

00:02:49.450 --> 00:02:52.270
is at first perfectly happy
with her cucumber,

00:02:52.294 --> 00:02:55.532
until she sees Winter trading for a grape.

00:02:55.946 --> 00:02:59.018
Suddenly, Lance is very
enthusiastic about trading.

00:02:59.358 --> 00:03:03.459
She gets her cucumber,
takes a bite and then --

00:03:03.483 --> 00:03:06.285
throws it right back out again.

00:03:06.656 --> 00:03:09.650
Meanwhile, Winter trades again
and gets another grape

00:03:09.674 --> 00:03:13.158
and has Lance's undivided attention
while she eats it.

00:03:13.555 --> 00:03:14.728
This time,

00:03:14.752 --> 00:03:17.714
Lance is not
so enthusiastic about trading.

00:03:17.738 --> 00:03:20.363
But eventually she does so.

00:03:20.387 --> 00:03:23.323
But when she gets the cucumber
this time around,

00:03:23.347 --> 00:03:26.037
she doesn't even take a bite

00:03:26.061 --> 00:03:28.461
before she throws it back out again.

00:03:28.879 --> 00:03:31.895
Apparently, Lance only wants a cucumber

00:03:31.919 --> 00:03:34.692
when she hasn't just watched
Winter eat a grape.

00:03:35.046 --> 00:03:37.117
And Lance was not alone in this.

00:03:37.141 --> 00:03:40.601
All of my Capuchins were perfectly happy
with their cucumbers

00:03:40.625 --> 00:03:43.442
as long as the other monkeys
were getting cucumbers too.

00:03:43.466 --> 00:03:45.974
But they often weren't so happy
with their cucumbers

00:03:45.998 --> 00:03:48.561
when other monkeys were getting a grape.

00:03:48.585 --> 00:03:51.401
The obvious question is why?

00:03:51.425 --> 00:03:54.053
If they liked those cucumbers before,

00:03:54.077 --> 00:03:55.244
what changed?

00:03:55.268 --> 00:03:57.101
Now, I'm a scientist,

00:03:57.125 --> 00:04:00.887
and scientists are famously shy
about reading too much into our studies,

00:04:00.911 --> 00:04:03.180
especially when it comes
to what other animals

00:04:03.204 --> 00:04:04.395
are thinking or feeling,

00:04:04.419 --> 00:04:05.835
because we can't ask them.

00:04:05.859 --> 00:04:08.741
But still, what I was seeing in my monkeys

00:04:08.765 --> 00:04:12.408
looked an awful lot like what we humans
would call a sense of fairness.

00:04:12.432 --> 00:04:13.621
After all,

00:04:13.645 --> 00:04:15.212
the difference in that cucumber

00:04:15.236 --> 00:04:18.125
was that it cam after Winter got a grape,

00:04:18.149 --> 00:04:19.669
rather than before.

00:04:20.014 --> 00:04:23.241
We humans are obsessed with fairness.

00:04:23.265 --> 00:04:24.855
I have a younger sister,

00:04:24.879 --> 00:04:26.070
and when we were little,

00:04:26.094 --> 00:04:28.839
if my sister got a bigger
piece of the pie than me,

00:04:28.863 --> 00:04:30.506
even by a crumb,

00:04:30.530 --> 00:04:32.236
I was furious,

00:04:32.260 --> 00:04:34.363
it wasn't fair.

00:04:34.387 --> 00:04:37.402
And the childhood me is not alone.

00:04:37.704 --> 00:04:42.132
We humans hate getting
less than another so much,

00:04:42.156 --> 00:04:43.950
that one study found

00:04:43.974 --> 00:04:46.703
that if humans were given
a hypothetical choice

00:04:46.727 --> 00:04:48.894
between earning 50,000 dollars a year

00:04:48.918 --> 00:04:51.155
while others earned 25,000 dollars

00:04:51.179 --> 00:04:53.441
or earning 100,000 dollars a year

00:04:53.465 --> 00:04:56.227
while others earned 250,000 dollars,

00:04:56.251 --> 00:04:58.323
nearly half the subjects

00:04:58.347 --> 00:05:02.077
prefer to earn 50,000 dollars
a year less money

00:05:02.101 --> 00:05:05.644
to avoid earning relatively less
than someone else.

00:05:05.668 --> 00:05:07.868
That's a pretty big price to pay.

00:05:08.525 --> 00:05:09.676
What drives people

00:05:09.700 --> 00:05:12.866
to this sort of apparently
irrational decision making?

00:05:12.890 --> 00:05:14.057
After all,

00:05:14.081 --> 00:05:17.176
throwing away your cucumber
because someone else got a grape

00:05:17.200 --> 00:05:20.279
only makes sense
if it makes things more fair.

00:05:20.756 --> 00:05:24.708
Otherwise, Winter has a grape,
and you have nothing.

00:05:24.732 --> 00:05:27.354
Of course humans are not Capuchin monkeys.

00:05:27.378 --> 00:05:28.671
But on the surface,

00:05:28.695 --> 00:05:30.553
sacrificing 50,000 dollars

00:05:30.577 --> 00:05:33.315
because somebody else
is going to earn more money than you

00:05:33.339 --> 00:05:36.632
makes no more sense
than throwing away that cucumber.

00:05:36.656 --> 00:05:38.836
Except, maybe it does.

00:05:39.177 --> 00:05:40.804
Some economists think

00:05:40.828 --> 00:05:44.153
that the sense of fairness in humans
is tied to cooperation.

00:05:44.645 --> 00:05:47.304
In other words, we need
that sense of fairness

00:05:47.328 --> 00:05:49.109
when we're working with somebody else

00:05:49.133 --> 00:05:51.696
to know when we're getting
the short end of the stick.

00:05:51.720 --> 00:05:52.879
Think about it this way.

00:05:52.903 --> 00:05:55.871
Let's say you have a colleague at work
who's having a hard time

00:05:55.895 --> 00:05:57.347
and needs a little extra help.

00:05:57.371 --> 00:05:59.442
You're probably more
than happy to help out,

00:05:59.466 --> 00:06:02.685
especially if she does
the same for you when you need it.

00:06:02.709 --> 00:06:05.010
In other words, if things even out.

00:06:05.034 --> 00:06:06.185
But now,

00:06:06.209 --> 00:06:08.756
let's say that colleague
is always slacking off

00:06:08.780 --> 00:06:10.363
and dumping extra work on you.

00:06:10.387 --> 00:06:12.664
That's infuriating.

00:06:12.688 --> 00:06:13.839
Or worse,

00:06:13.863 --> 00:06:15.442
what if you're doing all the work

00:06:15.466 --> 00:06:17.434
and she's getting paid more.

00:06:17.458 --> 00:06:19.537
You're outraged, right?

00:06:19.895 --> 00:06:22.569
As well you should be.

00:06:22.593 --> 00:06:24.101
That righteous fury

00:06:24.125 --> 00:06:27.323
is your sense of fairness
telling you that, well,

00:06:27.347 --> 00:06:29.149
it's not fair.

00:06:29.173 --> 00:06:32.701
You need to get your fair share
from the people you're working with

00:06:32.725 --> 00:06:35.494
or it's exploitation, not cooperation.

00:06:35.518 --> 00:06:39.550
You may not be able to leave every job
where you're treated unfairly,

00:06:39.574 --> 00:06:40.780
but in a perfect world,

00:06:40.804 --> 00:06:42.744
one without racism and sexism

00:06:42.768 --> 00:06:45.768
and the frictions associated
with finding a new job,

00:06:45.792 --> 00:06:48.187
it's your sense of fairness
that would let you know

00:06:48.211 --> 00:06:50.117
when it was time to move on.

00:06:50.141 --> 00:06:51.514
And if you couldn't?

00:06:51.538 --> 00:06:53.808
Well, that smoldering frustration

00:06:53.832 --> 00:06:56.855
might make you throw your cucumbers too.

00:06:57.268 --> 00:06:59.339
And human are not alone in this.

00:06:59.363 --> 00:07:00.641
In the previous study,

00:07:00.665 --> 00:07:02.752
there was nothing Lance could do about it,

00:07:02.776 --> 00:07:05.012
but what if there had been?

00:07:05.036 --> 00:07:06.226
It turns out

00:07:06.250 --> 00:07:09.616
that Capuchins simply refuse
to cooperate with other Capuchins

00:07:09.640 --> 00:07:12.560
who don't give them their share
after they work together.

00:07:12.584 --> 00:07:15.077
And refusing to work together
with another monkey

00:07:15.101 --> 00:07:18.696
is a pretty straightforward way
of leveling the playing field.

00:07:19.093 --> 00:07:21.942
Apparently, no monkey
getting anything at all

00:07:21.966 --> 00:07:24.387
is better than another
monkey getting more.

00:07:24.411 --> 00:07:26.950
But much like you and your coworker,

00:07:26.974 --> 00:07:29.946
they're perfectly happy
with a little short-term inequality

00:07:29.970 --> 00:07:33.478
as long as everything evens out
over the long run.

00:07:33.502 --> 00:07:36.549
This economic connection
between fairness and cooperation

00:07:36.573 --> 00:07:39.415
makes sense to me
as an evolutionary biologist.

00:07:39.439 --> 00:07:40.599
After all,

00:07:40.623 --> 00:07:43.260
your ancestors didn't get
to pass on their genes

00:07:43.284 --> 00:07:45.998
because they did well
in some absolute sense,

00:07:46.022 --> 00:07:48.814
but because they did better than others.

00:07:48.838 --> 00:07:50.776
We don't call it survival of the fit,

00:07:50.800 --> 00:07:52.815
we call it survival of the fittest.

00:07:52.839 --> 00:07:55.291
As in, more fit than others.

00:07:55.315 --> 00:07:56.755
It's all relative.

00:07:57.577 --> 00:07:58.728
OK.

00:07:58.752 --> 00:08:01.815
So my Capuchins don't like it
when they get less than another.

00:08:01.839 --> 00:08:04.506
And they're perfectly happy
to sacrifice their cucumbers

00:08:04.530 --> 00:08:05.871
to level the playing field.

00:08:05.895 --> 00:08:07.058
That's great.

00:08:07.082 --> 00:08:10.385
But what we would call
a sense of fairness in humans,

00:08:10.409 --> 00:08:14.584
also means that we care
when we get more than someone else.

00:08:14.933 --> 00:08:16.576
What about my monkeys?

00:08:16.600 --> 00:08:17.901
It turns out

00:08:17.925 --> 00:08:21.714
that primates do notice
when they get more than others.

00:08:21.738 --> 00:08:23.920
Or at least, some of them do.

00:08:23.944 --> 00:08:25.626
My Capuchins do not.

00:08:25.960 --> 00:08:28.016
But in one of my studies

00:08:28.040 --> 00:08:31.482
my chimpanzees would
sometimes refuse a grape

00:08:31.506 --> 00:08:35.276
if another chimpanzee
in their group got a cucumber,

00:08:35.300 --> 00:08:37.125
which is pretty impressive

00:08:37.149 --> 00:08:39.577
given how much my chimpanzees like grapes.

00:08:40.046 --> 00:08:45.078
However, they were still more upset
when they got less than another chimp

00:08:45.102 --> 00:08:47.045
as compared to when they got more.

00:08:47.069 --> 00:08:50.172
You may not think it's fair
when you have more than your neighbor,

00:08:50.196 --> 00:08:51.974
but you really don't think it's fair

00:08:51.998 --> 00:08:53.807
when your neighbor has more than you.

00:08:53.831 --> 00:08:55.823
Here's an important question though.

00:08:55.847 --> 00:08:58.966
Why do we care about
inequality or unfairness

00:08:58.990 --> 00:09:01.760
when we are the ones
who are unfairly benefiting?

00:09:01.784 --> 00:09:04.413
If evolution is about
survival of the fittest,

00:09:04.437 --> 00:09:08.365
wouldn't it make sense to grab
any advantage you can get?

00:09:08.810 --> 00:09:10.318
Here's the thing though.

00:09:10.342 --> 00:09:13.056
I do better if I get more than you, sure.

00:09:13.080 --> 00:09:16.155
But best of all is if you and I
can work together

00:09:16.179 --> 00:09:19.568
and get more than either one of us
could have gotten on our own.

00:09:19.592 --> 00:09:21.045
But why would you work with me

00:09:21.069 --> 00:09:23.354
if you don't think I'm going to play fair?

00:09:23.378 --> 00:09:26.752
But if you think I'm going to notice
when I've got more than you

00:09:26.776 --> 00:09:28.307
and do something about it,

00:09:28.331 --> 00:09:30.275
then you will work with me.

00:09:30.728 --> 00:09:32.633
Evolution has selected us

00:09:32.657 --> 00:09:35.379
to accept the occasional short-term loss

00:09:35.403 --> 00:09:39.739
in order to maintain these all-important
long-term relationships.

00:09:40.125 --> 00:09:42.006
This is true in chimpanzees,

00:09:42.030 --> 00:09:44.847
but it is even more important in humans.

00:09:44.871 --> 00:09:47.991
Humans are incredibly interconnected
and interdependent.

00:09:48.369 --> 00:09:50.964
And we have the advanced
cognitive abilities

00:09:50.988 --> 00:09:53.877
to be able to plan far into the future.

00:09:53.901 --> 00:09:56.004
And to recognize the importance

00:09:56.028 --> 00:09:58.795
of maintaining these
cooperative partnerships.

00:09:59.119 --> 00:10:01.222
Indeed if anything,

00:10:01.246 --> 00:10:03.453
I think we are likely underplaying

00:10:03.477 --> 00:10:06.282
how important the sense
of fairness is for people.

00:10:06.794 --> 00:10:10.523
One of the biggest differences
between humans and Capuchin monkeys

00:10:10.547 --> 00:10:14.688
is the sheer magnitude and ubiquity
of cooperation in humans.

00:10:14.712 --> 00:10:15.871
In other words,

00:10:15.895 --> 00:10:18.966
we're a lot more cooperative
than Capuchin monkeys are.

00:10:18.990 --> 00:10:22.307
Legal and economic systems
literally only exist

00:10:22.331 --> 00:10:24.839
if we all agree to participate in them.

00:10:24.863 --> 00:10:27.514
And if people feel left out
of the rewards and benefits

00:10:27.538 --> 00:10:28.688
of those systems,

00:10:28.712 --> 00:10:30.078
then they stop participating

00:10:30.102 --> 00:10:32.259
and the whole system falls apart.

00:10:32.681 --> 00:10:35.022
Many of the protests
and uprisings we're seeing,

00:10:35.046 --> 00:10:37.498
both in the US and around the globe,

00:10:37.522 --> 00:10:39.910
are explicitly framed
in terms of fairness,

00:10:39.934 --> 00:10:42.156
which is not surprising to me.

00:10:42.180 --> 00:10:45.758
Whether it's about disproportionate
access to resources,

00:10:45.782 --> 00:10:48.789
or that some groups are being
disproportionately impacted

00:10:48.813 --> 00:10:51.780
by the legal system
or the effects of a virus,

00:10:51.804 --> 00:10:54.625
these protests are the logical outcome

00:10:54.649 --> 00:10:58.624
of our long evolutionary tendency
to reject unfairness

00:10:58.648 --> 00:11:02.467
combined with our long history
of social stratification.

00:11:02.491 --> 00:11:04.189
And the systemic inequalities

00:11:04.213 --> 00:11:06.705
that have resulted
from that stratification.

00:11:06.729 --> 00:11:10.808
Layer on top of this the fact
that by many measures

00:11:10.832 --> 00:11:13.673
economic inequality is skyrocketing.

00:11:14.493 --> 00:11:17.556
Chris Boehm wrote a book
called "Hierarchy in the Forest"

00:11:17.580 --> 00:11:19.318
in which he argued

00:11:19.342 --> 00:11:21.707
that humans have reverse hierarchies

00:11:21.731 --> 00:11:24.104
in which those at the bottom band together

00:11:24.128 --> 00:11:27.110
to keep those at the top
from taking advantage of them.

00:11:27.531 --> 00:11:31.609
Perhaps these protests
are simply the latest manifestation

00:11:31.633 --> 00:11:34.642
of humans' tendency
to rebalance the hierarchy.

00:11:34.666 --> 00:11:38.230
Perhaps the biggest difference
between us and Capuchin monkeys

00:11:38.254 --> 00:11:40.842
is that we can recognize this problem

00:11:40.866 --> 00:11:43.413
and actively work
to do something about it.

00:11:43.437 --> 00:11:46.617
Of course we recognize
when we're disadvantaged.

00:11:46.641 --> 00:11:50.219
But we can and we must also recognize

00:11:50.243 --> 00:11:53.474
when we're advantaged
at the expense of someone else.

00:11:53.498 --> 00:11:55.276
And recognize fairness

00:11:55.300 --> 00:11:58.426
as the balance between
these two inequalities.

00:11:58.450 --> 00:12:01.797
Because our society literally
depends upon it.

00:12:02.391 --> 00:12:04.859
Indeed, my research shows

00:12:04.883 --> 00:12:09.057
that not all primate species
care about inequality.

00:12:09.081 --> 00:12:12.299
It's only those that rely on cooperation,

00:12:12.323 --> 00:12:14.910
which most definitely includes humans.

00:12:14.934 --> 00:12:17.037
We evolved to care about fairness

00:12:17.061 --> 00:12:21.103
because we rely on each other
for our cooperative society.

00:12:21.127 --> 00:12:23.096
And the more unfair the world gets,

00:12:23.120 --> 00:12:25.008
and the less we care about each other,

00:12:25.032 --> 00:12:26.961
the more peril we will face.

00:12:26.985 --> 00:12:30.135
Our issues are more complex
than grapes and cucumbers,

00:12:30.159 --> 00:12:32.595
but as the Capuchins have taught us,

00:12:32.619 --> 00:12:35.626
we will all do better
when we all play fair.

00:12:35.944 --> 00:12:37.094
Thank you.