I'm exhausted, so this will be brief and have no deep thoughts in it, but I wanted to pass on some of what James Surowiecki wrote about the issue of fairness when considering the European financial woes. Now, this was published back in the June 4 & 11 double-issue of The New Yorker, so the factual situation has changed; regardless, the concepts I've highlighted are still good for thinking about, especially in the terms of conflict resolution (which is where I believe I will use it in my course and in my book):
- "Similarly, a famous experiment known as the ultimatum game -- one person offers another a cut of a sum of money and the second person decides whether or not to accept -- shows that people will walk away from free money if they feel that an offer is unfair. Thus, even when there's a solution that would leave everyone better off, a fixation on fairness can make agreement impossible."
- "From the perspective of society as a whole, concern with fairness has all kinds of benefits: it limits exploitation, promotes meritocracy, and motivates workers. But in a negotiation where neither side can have what it really wants, and where the least bad solutions is as good as it gets, worrying too much about fairness can be suicidal."
- "Similarly, a famous experiment known as the ultimatum game -- one person offers another a cut of a sum of money and the second person decides whether or not to accept -- shows that people will walk away from free money if they feel that an offer is unfair. Thus, even when there's a solution that would leave everyone better off, a fixation on fairness can make agreement impossible."
- "From the perspective of society as a whole, concern with fairness has all kinds of benefits: it limits exploitation, promotes meritocracy, and motivates workers. But in a negotiation where neither side can have what it really wants, and where the least bad solutions is as good as it gets, worrying too much about fairness can be suicidal."
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