Rooting Out the Robin Hood Effect
By Dave Mosher
ScienceNOW Daily News
11 April 2007
When given the chance, people will sacrifice their own incomes to punish the rich and help the poor. That's the conclusion of a new study, which shows that we harness our inner Robin Hoods to promote egalitarianism--although our motives are not always pure.
No animal can top humans when it comes to altruism. People regularly sacrifice their resources--including money, food, and even internal organs--for no personal profit. We're also at the top of the list when it comes to punishing perceived injustices. Studies have shown, for example, that people will try to inflict financial harm on freeloaders (ScienceNOW, 6 April 2006). What motivates these behaviors?
A team of political scientists at the University of California, Davis, set up a computer-based game to find out. The researchers divided 20 people into groups of four. Each person was given an income ranging from wealthy to poor. During the first round of the game, players had the chance to anonymously spend a "monetary unit" (MU) to decrease or increase another player's income by three MUs. In the next round, players switched groups and again had the chance to anonymously boost or lighten another player's pocketbook.
After several rounds, a noticeable pattern emerged: The rich suffered, and the poor got a helping hand. Over 70% of the money spent to drain another player's purse was directed at richer players, while around 60% of income-boosting spending went to poorer players, the team reports tomorrow in Nature. What's more, the poorest participants spent almost twice as much money draining incomes than top earners did, and the top earners spent 77% more than the poorest players to boost lower incomes.
"We've shown people will sacrifice their own money for equality," says study co-author James Fowler, who notes that a desire for equality seems to be at the root of many of our social behaviors. But people aren't trying to level the playing field out of the goodness of their heart, he notes. A survey conducted after the computer game revealed that anger and annoyance at differences in income were the principle drivers behind a player's decision to boost or drain another's mock salary. The most annoyed players, in fact, spent the most to alter what others earned.
Ernst Fehr, an experimental economist at the University of Zürich in Switzerland, says the study supports the theory that equality is a widespread human desire. "No one has previously isolated the emotions behind punishment decisions," he says. "This work helps explain why people get so upset when they discover someone is making $40 million a year and they're not."