Johnjoe McFadden describes a game used to test the responses of individuals:
One of the most widely used experimental setups to investigate the origins of altruism is the "ultimatum game". Two subjects are asked to share a cash sum of say £100. One of them (the proposer) decides the cut - who gets what. The other (the responder) can either accept the share offered or toss the money back in the proposer's face, in which case, neither of them takes any of it away. They play the game only once, so there's no opportunity to develop reciprocal altruism.Got that? OK, now here's the bit that interests me:
If the responder behaves entirely and rationally selfishly, he or she should accept whatever the proposer is prepared to give. But if the proposer offers less than £25, the other player tends to refuse the share and both leave empty handed. Most people are prepared to forsake personal benefit to punish selfishness. In the language of evolutionary psychologists, we are spiteful.I'm interested in why 'spite' should be thought to be the appropriate way of describing this response. Calling it 'spite' focuses on the dimension that A would rather B didn't get too much more than she does, even if the consequence is that they both get nothing. It might be said, too, that hers is envious conduct. But why not think instead about the fact that, knowing the rules of this cooperative game, A might regard it as undignified to go along with the very unequal split that B is offering? She might also feel that it is unjust for him to offer it, given that (for all that we know from the presuppositions of the game) he has no greater entitlement to the money than she has. She might think that a principle of rough equality should apply in these circumstances. Calling A's reaction 'spite' pays attention only to motivations of individual self-interest, and disregards the social values that could be at work in A's thinking. This seems odd when McFadden also speaks of A's type of reaction as contributing to cooperative behaviour.
Maybe there are other impulses than self-interest at work in the support for cooperative behaviour.