# Do humans have an innate sense of justice? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 10, 2004, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-humans-have-an-innate-sense-of-justice/279107 "2004-12-10T11:57:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2004, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-humans-have-an-innate-sense-of-justice/279107/1 "2004-12-10T11:57:50Z")
Is justice innate, or is it a social construct? Does this change anything: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3116678.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3116678.stm) ? ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2004, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-humans-have-an-innate-sense-of-justice/279107/2 "2004-12-10T12:07:26Z")
It should be noted that this study relates to justice in the sense of “prejudicial treatment” rather than “criminal retribution”. Those same primates are still just as likely to beat a smaller species to death _just because they can_, just as a man might murder another man to take his wife in Papua New Guinea _because he can_. Society merely ‘trains’ that monkey or man by providing an input to the calculation: _if_ this act _then_ these consequences. Some monkeys, or some men, or indeed some _societies_, might not acheive adequate ‘training’. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2004, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-humans-have-an-innate-sense-of-justice/279107/3 "2004-12-10T15:40:11Z")
Of course in reality the two (biologic evolution and social evolution) are interrelated in a nonlinear manner. Biologic predispositions were selected that were beneficial for gene transmission in social groups, and social group mores were selected that took advantage of those biologic predispositions contemporaneously. But is there a biological basis for our sense of justics - both our need to reward coorperators and to punish cheaters even at personal expense? Of course. The basis is fairly obvious - in smaller social groups reputation is highly valuable. For future success others must know that they are best off dealing with you fairly. Two article snippets from Science help illustrate the why and the how: [DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5485.1773] Fairness Versus Reason in the Ultimatum Game Martin A. Nowak,1\* Karen M. Page,1 Karl Sigmund2,3 > [@](#): > > The Ultimatum Game is quickly catching up with the Prisoner’s Dilemma as a prime showpiece of apparently irrational behavior. In the past two decades, it has inspired dozens of theoretical and experimental investigations. The rules of the game are surprisingly simple. Two players have to agree on how to split a sum of money. The proposer makes an offer. If the responder accepts, the deal goes ahead. If the responder rejects, neither player gets anything. In both cases, the game is over. Obviously, rational responders should accept even the smallest positive offer, since the alternative is getting nothing. Proposers, therefore, should be able to claim almost the entire sum. In a large number of human studies, however, conducted with different incentives in different countries, the majority of proposers offer 40to 50% of the total sum, and about half of all responders reject offers below 30% (1-6). > > The irrational human emphasis on a fair division suggests that players have preferences which do not depend solely on their own payoff, and that responders are ready to punish proposers offering only a small share by rejecting the deal (which costs less to themselves than to the proposers). But how do these preferences come about? One possible explanation is that the players do not grasp that they interact only once. Humans are accustomed to repeated interactions. Repeating the Ultimatum Game is like haggling over a price, and fair splits are more likely (6-8). Another argument is based on the view that allowing a co-player to get a large share is conceding a relative advantage to a direct rival. This argument holds only for very small groups, however: a simple calculation shows that responders should only reject offers that are less than 1/nth of the total sum, where n is the number of individuals in the group (9). A third explanation is based on the idea that a substantial proportion of humans maximize a subjective utility function different from the payoff (10-12). > > Here, we studied the Ultimatum Game from the perspective of evolutionary game theory … > [conluding] … Rejecting low offers is costly, but the cost is offset by gaining the reputation of somebody who insists on a fair offer. When reputation is included in the Ultimatum Game, adaptation favors fairness over reason. In this most elementary game, information on the co-player fosters the emergence of strategies that are nonrational, but promote economic exchange. This agrees well with findings on the emergence of cooperation (21) or of bargaining behavior (22). Reputation based on commitment and communication plays an essential role in the natural history of economic life. Science, Vol 305, Issue 5688, 1246-1247 , 27 August 2004 Sweet Revenge? Brian Knutson\* > [@](#): > > Using an elegant laboratory task designed to elicit acts of revenge among human volunteers, de Quervain and colleagues appear to have captured this complex emotional dynamic of schadenfreude with a positron emission tomography (PET) camera. During the task, subjects played games involving real money with a series of different partners. In each interaction, subjects chose to give their partners money, which was then quadrupled. Next, partners who received the money had a chance to reciprocate, or to pay back half to the subject. If partners decided not to reciprocate, or defected, subjects could choose to administer punishment. At this point, their brains were scanned. > > De Quervain and co-workers first asked whether choosing to punish a defector would recruit brain circuits implicated in reward processing. They found that when subjects administered a monetary punishment to defectors, a subcortical region of the brain called the striatum increased its consumption of oxygen (that is, was “activated”). The investigators interpreted this to indicate that punishing a defector activates brain regions related to feeling good about revenge rather than brain regions related to feeling bad about having been violated. Indeed, these striatal foci lie near brain areas that rats will work furiously to stimulate electrically (4). The investigators then asked whether the striatum would be activated even when administering the punishment carried a personal cost. They found that the striatum was still activated when subjects chose to administer punishment at a personal cost, as was a region in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) that has been implicated in balancing costs and benefits (5). Although these findings suggested a connection between striatal activation and the satisfaction one might derive from punishing a defector, they do not establish a directional relationship between the two. Thus, in a clever internal analysis, the investigators observed that the degree of striatal activation during no-cost punishment predicted the extent to which subjects chose to punish at a personal cost (that is, under less satisfying conditions). This finding suggested to the investigators that striatal activation indexed subjects’ anticipation of satisfaction, rather than satisfaction per se. > > These findings fit a fresh piece into the rapidly expanding puzzle of reward processing as revealed by brain imaging. Ironically, punishment of defectors in this study activated the same regions (that is, striatum and MPFC) that were activated when people rewarded cooperators in a recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study (6). These seemingly diametrically opposite social behaviors are united by a common psychological experience–both involve the anticipation of a satisfying social outcome. As presaged by comparative research (7), humans also show increased striatal activity during anticipation of nonsocial rewards such as monetary gains (8) and pleasant tastes (9). Together, these findings imply that for certain parts of the striatum, it’s the feeling that counts. And yes the precedents can be seen in animal models. ---
**Author:** ![Rashak\_Mani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ea666f/32.png) [@Rashak\_Mani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rashak_Mani)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2004, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-humans-have-an-innate-sense-of-justice/279107/4 "2004-12-10T20:10:21Z")
Any way to subscribe to a thread without actually putting a reply… ? ---
**Author:** ![Gozu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gozu/32/6615_2.png) [@Gozu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gozu)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2007, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-humans-have-an-innate-sense-of-justice/279107/5 "2007-06-06T04:48:24Z")
[QUOTE=Rashak Mani] Any way to subscribe to a thread without actually putting a reply… ? [/QUOTE] One can only dream that, some day, in the future, say…the year of our lord two thousand and seven, there shall be a subscribe button above every thread. But I didn’t revive this thread to make dubious prophecies, I was actually about to start a thread relating to this very topic when I searched and found this one. I have often wondered about this idea of justice or fairness that seems so pervasive to us. Maybe the concept is unheard of in certain societies but it certainly seems to have been the norm for a long time. How does it make sense that the idea of fairness would even emerge in a world so patently unfair? What does it even _mean_ ? The whole idea of evolution is that the more capable (stronger, faster, smarter, meaner) survive and if the weak get trampled in the process, so much the better. More real estate for descendants with good genes. One could argue that these concept of fairness and justice work in favor of evolution and I’m willing to grant that a lawful, ordered society is more likely to succeed. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t so. However, justice and fairness is not a requisite for such. We have a long, ongoing history of fundamentally unfair class-based societies with all kinds of kings, nobles and serfs which have worked just fine. Taking a step further, let’s consider other organized species. Ants and bees have highly organized “social” structures and have understood the lesson about specialisation but I’m pretty sure the individuals haven’t enough intelligence to understand fairness. Wolf packs, which are arguably made of smarter individuals, probably use the “I’ll eat your share cuz I’m stronger. Now beat it! Woof\*!” justice system. Frankly, I just don’t get it. What’s your take on this? - Yes. Wolves bark. ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2007, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-humans-have-an-innate-sense-of-justice/279107/6 "2007-06-06T04:54:11Z")
On reading the article it said the monkeys that did not receive equal treatment did not take it out on the partner. In humans of course I think there is a propensity to do just that. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2007, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-humans-have-an-innate-sense-of-justice/279107/7 "2007-06-06T13:47:57Z")
Well, both. People have an innate sense of justice. When looking dispassionately at the situation, I find children are _extremely_ good at figuring out what’s fair or not. It’s when emotions get involved that they start getting unfair, and of course they sometimes just take what they personally want and to heck with the consequences. In order to keep everyone from flying off the handle, we teach ourselves to acept unfairness. And let’s not be naive: our justice system is ridiculously lax. It may be right and proper for it to be lax, but _fair_ it isn’t. It’s not about being fair; it’s about keeping us from engaging in wild vengeance. As we age, we tend to internalize certain limits in our personal attitudes as well. We can’t just go kill someone, no matter how much they might deserve it (people who travel 20 miles under the speed limit on a one-lane no-pass road must _DIE_!!!11).