Video: monkey cooperation and fairness

While game theory was originally designed to explain human strategy, it turns out that the predictions are often applicable in animal behavior.

Here is a fun video that shows an experiment about monkeys and cooperation.

Video: monkey cooperation and fairness

Some of the game theory concepts are:

–reciprocity: once Virgil has all of the nuts, he doesn’t have to offer any back to Vulcan. In fact, in a one-shot game he might be tempted to steal all of the nuts. But in human society and in monkeys, there is a sense you should repay your debts to build good karma.

–jealousy over rewards: in the second game, you’ll notice how Vulcan is originally happy with the biscuit until he sees Virgil getting a juicy grape. He has a jealousy over payouts, so, as the narrator points out, “he would soon have nothing than be short-changed.” Games of jealousy can often be very destructive as I wrote about in this article.