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My first year in graduate school,
studying cooperation in monkeys,

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I spent a lot of time outside,

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just watching our groups
of capuchin monkeys interact.

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One afternoon, I was out back
feeding peanuts to one of our groups,

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which required distracting
one of our males, Ozzie,

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enough so that the other monkeys
could get some.

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Ozzie loved peanuts,

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and he always tried to do
anything he could to grab some.

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On that day, however,

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he began trying to bring other things
from his enclosure to me

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and trade them with me
in order to get a peanut.

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Now, capuchins are smart,
so this wasn't necessarily a surprise.

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But what was a surprise

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was that some of the things
that he was bringing me,

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I was pretty sure he liked
better than peanuts.

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First, he brought me
a piece of monkey chow,

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which is like dried dog food --

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it was even made by Purina --

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and for a monkey,
is about as worthless as it gets.

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Of course, I didn't give him
a peanut for that.

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But he kept trying,

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and eventually, he brought me
a quarter of an orange

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and tried to trade it
with me for a peanut.

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Now, oranges are a valuable
monkey commodity,

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so this trade seemed, shall I say,
a little bit nuts?

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Now you may be wondering
how we know what monkeys prefer.

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Well, we ask them,

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by giving them a choice between two foods

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and seeing which one they pick.

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Generally speaking,
their preferences are a lot like ours:

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the sweeter it is, the more they like it.

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So, much like humans prefer
cupcakes to kale,

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monkeys prefer fruits,
like oranges or grapes,

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to vegetables like cucumbers,

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and all of this to monkey chow.

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And peanuts are not bad.

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However, they definitely don't prefer them
to a chunk of orange.

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So when Ozzie tried to trade
a quarter of an orange for a peanut,

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it was a surprise,

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and I began to wonder
if he suddenly wanted that peanut

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because everybody else
in his group was getting one.

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In case you're wondering,
I did give Ozzie his peanut.

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But then I went straight
to my graduate adviser,

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Frans de Waal,

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and we began to design a study

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to see how the monkeys would respond

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when somebody else in their group
got a better reward than they did

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for doing the same work.

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It was a very simple study.

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We took two monkeys from the same group

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and had them sit side by side,

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and they would do a task,

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which was trading a token with me,

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and if they did so successfully,

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they got a reward.

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The catch was that one monkey
always got a piece of cucumber,

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and the other monkey
sometimes got a piece of cucumber,

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but sometimes got a grape.

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And if you'll recall,

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grapes are much preferred to cucumbers

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on the capuchin monkey hierarchy.

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These are two of my capuchin monkeys.

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Winter, on the right,
is trading for a grape,

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and Lance, on the left,
is trading for a cucumber.

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You can see that she --
and yes, Lance is actually a female --

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is at first perfectly happy
with her cucumber,

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until she sees Winter trading for a grape.

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Suddenly, Lance is very
enthusiastic about trading.

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She gets her cucumber,
takes a bite and then --

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throws it right back out again.

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Meanwhile, Winter trades again
and gets another grape,

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and has Lance's undivided attention
while she eats it.

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This time,

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Lance is not
so enthusiastic about trading.

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But eventually, she does so.

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But when she gets the cucumber
this time around,

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she doesn't even take a bite

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before she throws it back out again.

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Apparently, Lance only wants a cucumber

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when she hasn't just watched
Winter eat a grape.

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And Lance was not alone in this.

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All of my capuchins were perfectly happy
with their cucumbers

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as long as the other monkeys
were getting cucumbers too.

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But they often weren't so happy
with their cucumbers

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when other monkeys were getting a grape.

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The obvious question is why?

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If they liked those cucumbers before,

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what changed?

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Now, I'm a scientist,

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and scientists are famously shy
about reading too much into our studies,

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especially when it comes
to what other animals

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are thinking or feeling,

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because we can't ask them.

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But still, what I was seeing in my monkeys

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looked an awful lot like what we humans
would call a sense of fairness.

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After all,

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the difference in that cucumber
was that it came after Winter got a grape,

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rather than before.

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We humans are obsessed with fairness.

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I have a younger sister,

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and when we were little,

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if my sister got a bigger piece
of the pie than me,

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even by a crumb,

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I was furious.

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It wasn't fair.

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And the childhood me is not alone.

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We humans hate getting
less than another so much

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that one study found

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that if humans were given
a hypothetical choice

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between earning 50,000 dollars a year

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while others earned 25,000 dollars,

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or earning 100,000 dollars a year

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while others earned 250,000 dollars,

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nearly half the subjects

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prefer to earn 50,000 dollars
a year less money

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to avoid earning relatively less
than someone else.

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That's a pretty big price to pay.

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What drives people

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to this sort of apparently
irrational decision-making?

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After all,

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throwing away your cucumber
because someone else got a grape

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only makes sense
if it makes things more fair.

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Otherwise, Winter has a grape,
and you have nothing.

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Of course humans are not capuchin monkeys.

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But on the surface,

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sacrificing 50,000 dollars

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because somebody else
is going to earn more money than you

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makes no more sense
than throwing away that cucumber.

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Except maybe it does.

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Some economists think

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that the sense of fairness in humans
is tied to cooperation.

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In other words, we need
that sense of fairness

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when we're working with somebody else

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to know when we're getting
the short end of the stick.

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Think about it this way.

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Let's say you have a colleague at work
who's having a hard time

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and needs a little extra help.

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You're probably more
than happy to help out,

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especially if she does
the same for you when you need it.

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In other words, if things even out.

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But now,

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let's say that colleague
is always slacking off

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and dumping extra work on you.

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That's infuriating.

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Or worse,

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what if you're doing all the work,
and she's getting paid more.

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You're outraged, right?

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As well you should be.

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That righteous fury
is your sense of fairness

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telling you that, well, it's not fair.

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You need to get your fair share
from the people you're working with,

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or it's exploitation, not cooperation.

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You may not be able to leave every job
where you're treated unfairly,

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but in a perfect world,

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one without racism and sexism

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and the frictions associated
with finding a new job,

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it's your sense of fairness
that would let you know

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when it was time to move on.

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And if you couldn't?

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Well, that smoldering frustration
might make you throw your cucumbers too.

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And humans are not alone in this.

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In the previous study,
there was nothing Lance could do about it,

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but what if there had been?

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It turns out

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that capuchins simply refuse
to cooperate with other capuchins

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who don't give them their share
after they worked together.

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And refusing to work together
with another monkey

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is a pretty straightforward way
of leveling the playing field.

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Apparently, no monkey
getting anything at all

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is better than another
monkey getting more.

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But much like you and your coworker,

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they're perfectly happy
with a little short-term inequality

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as long as everything evens out
over the long run.

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This economic connection
between fairness and cooperation

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makes sense to me
as an evolutionary biologist.

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After all,

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your ancestors didn't get
to pass on their genes

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because they did well
in some absolute sense,

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but because they did better than others.

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We don't call it survival of the fit,

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we call it survival of the fittest.

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As in more fit than others.

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It's all relative.

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OK.

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So my capuchins don't like it
when they get less than another.

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And they're perfectly happy
to sacrifice their cucumbers

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to level the playing field.

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That's great.

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But what we would call
a sense of fairness in humans

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also means that we care
when we get more than someone else.

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What about my monkeys?

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It turns out

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that primates do notice
when they get more than others,

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or at least some of them do.

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My capuchins do not.

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But in one of my studies,

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my chimpanzees would
sometimes refuse a grape

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if another chimpanzee
in their group got a cucumber,

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which is pretty impressive,
given how much my chimpanzees like grapes.

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However, they were still more upset
when they got less than another chimp

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as compared to when they got more.

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You may not think it's fair
when you have more than your neighbor,

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but you really don't think it's fair
when your neighbor has more than you.

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Here's an important question, though.

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Why do we care
about inequality or unfairness

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when we are the ones
who are unfairly benefiting?

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If evolution is about
survival of the fittest,

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wouldn't it make sense to grab
any advantage you can get?

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Here's the thing though.

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I do better if I get more than you, sure.

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But best of all is if you and I
can work together

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and get more than either one of us
could have gotten on our own.

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But why would you work with me
if you don't think I'm going to play fair?

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But if you think I'm going to notice
when I've got more than you

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and do something about it,

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then you will work with me.

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Evolution has selected us
to accept the occasional short-term loss

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in order to maintain these all-important
long-term relationships.

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This is true in chimpanzees,

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but it is even more important in humans.

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Humans are incredibly interconnected
and interdependent,

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and we have the advanced
cognitive abilities

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to be able to plan far into the future.

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And to recognize the importance

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of maintaining these
cooperative partnerships.

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Indeed, if anything,

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I think we are likely underplaying

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how important the sense
of fairness is for people.

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One of the biggest differences
between humans and capuchin monkeys

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is the sheer magnitude and ubiquity
of cooperation in humans.

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In other words,

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we're a lot more cooperative
than capuchin monkeys are.

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Legal and economic systems
literally only exist

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if we all agree to participate in them.

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And if people feel left out
of the rewards and benefits

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of those systems,

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then they stop participating,

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and the whole system falls apart.

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Many of the protests
and uprisings we're seeing,

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both in the US and around the globe,

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are explicitly framed
in terms of fairness,

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which is not surprising to me.

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Whether it's about disproportionate
access to resources,

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or that some groups are being
disproportionately impacted

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by the legal system
or the effects of a virus,

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these protests are the logical outcome

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of our long evolutionary tendency
to reject unfairness

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combined with our long history
of social stratification.

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And the systemic inequalities

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that have resulted
from that stratification.

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Layer on top of this the fact
that by many measures

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economic inequality is skyrocketing.

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Chris Boehm wrote a book
called "Hierarchy in the Forest,"

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in which he argued
that humans have reverse hierarchies

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in which those at the bottom band together

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to keep those at the top
from taking advantage of them.

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Perhaps these protests
are simply the latest manifestation

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of humans' tendency
to rebalance the hierarchy.

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Perhaps the biggest difference
between us and capuchin monkeys

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is that we can recognize this problem

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and actively work
to do something about it.

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Of course we recognize
when we're disadvantaged.

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But we can and we must also recognize

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when we're advantaged
at the expense of someone else,

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and recognize fairness

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as the balance between
these two inequalities,

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because our society
literally depends upon it.

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Indeed, my research shows

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that not all primate species
care about inequality.

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It's only those that rely on cooperation,

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which most definitely includes humans.

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We evolved to care about fairness

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because we rely on each other
for our cooperative society.

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And the more unfair the world gets,

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and the less we care about each other,

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the more peril we will face.

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Our issues are more complex
than grapes and cucumbers,

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but as the capuchins have taught us,

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we will all do better
when we all play fair.

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Thank you.