The Fairness Gene: Two Stories Out of Sweden

An interesting paper:

"Heritability of ultimatum game responder behavior," Björn Wallace, David Cesarini, Paul Lichtenstein & Magnus Johannesson Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming

Abstract:
Experimental evidence suggests that many people are willing to deviate from materially maximizing strategies to punish unfair behavior. Even though little is known about the origins of such fairness preferences, it has been suggested that they have deep evolutionary roots and that they are crucial for maintaining and understanding cooperation among non-kin. Here we report the results of an ultimatum game, played for real monetary stakes, using twins recruited from the population-based Swedish Twin Registry as our subject pool. Employing standard structural equation modeling techniques, we estimate that >40% of the variation in subjects' rejection behavior is explained by additive genetic effects. Our estimates also suggest a very modest role for common environment as a source of phenotypic variation.

Based on these findings, we argue that any attempt to explain observed ultimatum bargaining game behavior that ignores this genetic influence is incomplete.

The Swedish Twin Registry took me back for a moment, to reading the "Letters" section in...well, in certain magazines, when I was in college. Those crazy Swedish Twins appeared in LOTS of the letters in various female forms.

But I was roused from my reverie by the thought of the difficulty of separating
nature (genetic twins) from nurture (being raised in Sweden! Even if you are separated from your twin, being raised in Sweden means that you still want to give all your money away to people who don't work).

Reminded of this passage, reported in REASON (on line by Kerry Howley), and taken from THE LOCAL:

A married couple in Kinda in the south east of Sweden have lost a court bid to retain their current level of welfare payments. For almost ten years the husband and wife pair have asserted their right to opt out of the rat race and live on a combination of state support and their own crops.

Ötergötland county court disagreed however, ruling that there were no health issues preventing the pair from taking up employment and that their benefits should therefore be reduced, Corren.se reports.

In a letter to the county court, the husband had argued for a reversal of the decision taken by local social services at the end of May to reduce the couple's benefits.

"Conventional work is out of the question for me - both in terms of my conscience and on an intellectual level - as it seems objectionable with regard to both my personal well-being and the well-being of society as a whole. Emotionally too it creates unbearable pain and dejection," he wrote.

If you have a society that creates that kind of sense of entitlement and intellectual puffery, you CAN'T separate nature from nurture. All of Sweden has a fairness gene, or fairness meme. As any 4 year old knows, "share" means "give me some of what you have." Most of us grow out of that when we turn 8 or so, but not our friends in Kinda. (Nice town name, by the way. I would like to live in Definitely, not in Kinda)