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23 September 2003 Monkey
justice
An adult and
juvenile brown capuchin monkey demonstrate food sharing
behavior.
Photograph copyright Frans de Waal, Emory University
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"DAYA! Daya!"
"Cheating! Cheating!" one can imagine the capuchin monkeys
screaming out in a rather innovative experiment conducted to find out if
monkeys had a sense of fairness. The results, published in the journal
Nature, suggest that in at least one species, there may be something
like "monkey justice."
The two lead researchers, Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal, started out
with the knowledge that capuchin monkeys like cucumbers, which could be
used as rewards for performing certain tasks. The researchers also knew
that even more than cucumbers, the monkeys liked grapes, that is, grapes
could be considered as a kind of "bonus."
They then grouped 10 female capuchin monkeys into pairs, getting them to
perform certain tasks side by side. If both monkeys performed a task
correctly, they'd each be given a cucumber. Fair enough, right?
Then the researchers added a twist to the experiment. Sometimes, they
would give a grape to one monkey and a cucumber to the other, even if
they performed the same tasks. Even worse, the researchers would
sometimes "reward" one monkey a grape for not doing anything.
I hope you're being properly human and reacting, "Daya!" Now
the question is whether the capuchin monkeys would react in the manner
you're doing. It seems they did. According to the researchers, the
response was quite dramatic. Some of the monkeys who were "victims
of injustice" began to refuse tasks that were set. Others -- and
this is really amazing -- would perform the task but refuse to take the
reward. And still others would accept the reward but throw it down on
the ground!
There's more to this monkey morality tale. Brosnan and De Waal report
that the "mistreated" monkeys never reacted against their
"privileged" partners. In fact, if after an
"injustice" a capuchin monkey was offered a grape for not
doing anything, she would sometimes give it to the other monkey!
Of course, this is just one experiment, with a small group of monkeys.
Brosnan and De Waal themselves admit the study is still too limited to
make any grand conclusions, and they intend to repeat the study among
chimpanzees, who are more closely related to humans.
Why go through all this trouble? Humans like to think we're the most
superior of animal species, that we are the only ones who can think and
rationalize, and that fairness and justice are functions of this ability
to rationalize, to make rules. Now we have to wonder if indeed an
ethical sense of "fairness" is uniquely human.
But if capuchin monkeys have a sense of fairness and justice, would it
mean that a sense of fairness evolved much earlier in pre-human species?
Could it mean, too, that the widespread injustices we have today are in
fact human creations?
But wait, we do know animals do "perpetuate" injustices on
each other as well. You see that with our pets -- many dogs and cats
will grab food from "fellow" pets' dishes, or even sometimes
from their mouths.
The question though is whether they are "conscious" of these
injustices. You can scold the "unjust" dog, "Bad boy.
Don't do that," and they'll look contrite, but any good animal
psychologist will tell you they hide their tails only because they know
you disapprove of something, but will not know what exactly you're
scolding them for.
Humans, in contrast, intentionally deprive someone else of what he or
she deserves. Some, like our dogs, will react with contrition when the
injustice is exposed. Others will try to rationalize their way out,
arguing they have families to feed. So, maybe, it is in fact our
"intelligence," including our ability to go into convoluted
reasoning, that works against fairness and justice, virtues that evolved
earlier as part of our animal legacy.
The biologist in me wants to believe we are "innately" wired
to be just and fair. Brosnan and De Waal say cooperation is itself the
product of biological evolution; that in nature, cooperation rather than
competition is the key to survival.
But my training in anthropology also tells me fairness and justice need
to evolve within societies, in day to day practice at home and in our
work place. I've already written about how we don't have a word for
"fairness" in Tagalog. I pointed out that "patas,"
the word many Tagalogs use to mean "fair," isn't quite
accurate. My friend Dr. Henny Espanola of Iloilo City agrees: "Patas
is more for "equal," used in a game or business. Nothing won,
nothing lost." Among Ilonggos, she points out, the terms "justo"
and "justo justo lang"-Spanish for "just"-are used
to refer to being fair.
Philippine society, with its mix of values coming from feudalism and a
highly competitive capitalism, has very little sense of fairness. The
emphasis always is on our own privilege and entitlement. We don't feel
we owe the less powerful anything, whether they are our employees, our
children, our co-workers.
Note, too, that the underdog, the oppressed classes do not necessarily
think of liberation in terms of justice. All too often,
"fairness" means negotiating to get one's share of the loot,
and keeping quiet if successful at getting one's cut, thinking
"fairness" has been achieved in terms of "patas."
The capuchin monkeys seem to know better, refusing an unjust reward or
rejecting it almost violently, or going "on strike" by
refusing any more tasks given a situation that is so unjust. They seem
to know -- and we better pick up that lesson soon -- that a "patas"
that comes with collusion or compromise will be a "no win-no
loss" proposition only in the short term. In the end, it will lead
to a situation where we will all lose, whether corruptors, corrupted or
the ones who choose to keep quiet about the system.
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