The other day I bought my 6 year old son an unexpected Lego kit. Although he had done nothing to deserve it, it made him cry!
Why, because his nephew got a bigger one.
This was a case in which Rationality was completely trumped by immediate social comparison. As I tried to explain to my son Liam, the only reason he got a prize at all was because I was in the store to buy a reward for his nephew, Finian. We were in the store solely because I had promised Liam's older brother Dave that I’d stop by and pick up a prize for Finian, who had earned a reward for a week of meeting a behavioral goal. Because Liam was along for the ride, I figured I had to buy him something. But because he himself had a large box of yet-unearned reward Legos at home, it didn’t seem right or necessary to buy him something as big as Finian’s reward.
Liam is old enough to understand all this. I know this because whenever we are a discussing any of the rewards Liam is himself trying to earn, he is as clever as a Harvard Law student in arguing for a nuanced interpretation of the rules—as long as it favors him. And he is even more clever in logically working out errors in his parents’ rulings, if said error disfavors him in any remote fashion.
The logic of self-interest
I was surprised at my son’s irrational response to what was supposed to an unexpected gift. But that’s because I was thinking like a rational economist, reasoning that “Something is better than nothing.” That’s why psychologists and economists alike are sometimes surprised when people reject offers in the ultimatum game—if someone offers me $10, why should I accept it if they gave themselves $10, but reject it if they gave themselves $90? In either case, I end up with the exact same $10. But rejecting $10 is something people do most of the time, if they feel that the offer is somehow “unfair.”
Judgments of fairness work in a rather biased way, and they carry along the rest of the mind’s rational judgmental capacities for the ride. Sometimes they make us smarter than usual. Consider the now classic findings from Leda Cosmides and John Tooby’s labs, in which people are given a logical problem that even mathematicians and philosophers often miss. Your task is to determine whether the following logical rule is true or false: All As must be 2s. You are shown 4 cards, and informed that each has a letter on one side, and a number on the other. One card shows an A, one card shows a B, one shows a 1, and the last one shows a 2. Which cards do you turn over? (think it through before you read the next paragraph).
Did you think you ought to turn over the card with the “2” on it (in case it had a B on it)? Did you think you should turn over the “B” card (in case it had a “1” on it). If so, you are not the first one to make an error on this game. Only the card with the A and the card with the 2 need to be checked. If the B has a 2, it’s irrelevant to the rule. And the 2 could have an A, B, C, or Z, on the back, but it’s irrelevant to testing the rule as well (a 2 with an A would only show that some As might have 2s, and there’s no suggestion in the rule as stated that a 2 must have an A on the back).
But now imagine that you are testing the following rule, linked to a social contract: All medical marijuana users must be over 20 years of age. You see 4 people: 1 is smoking a medical reefer, one is drinking water, one has gray hair and wrinkled skin, the other is a college student of ambiguous age, somewhere between 18 and 22. If you are like most folks, you won’t check the old person, and you won’t check the person drinking water, but will check the other two. And you’d be right. Logically, both problems are the same. But people are very good at solving the same logical problem when it’s linked to a social contract. It's not because the material in the second problem is more familiar or engaging, if Cosmides and Tooby changes things around, people make mistakes with familiar material. Judges can be thrown off, however, if they are making judgments about genetic relatives (and catching them would lead to punishment).
Invidious social comparisons and Deep Rationality
Along with a team of colleagues, I’ve begun examining how people’s economic decisions change depending on functional goals. We’re finding that, rather than there being one rational economist inside a person’s head, there are several different economic subselves, each with different priorities. Other researchers are finding that economic judgments vary with sex and hormonal state in predictable ways. We’ve argued that, rather than being irrational, people’s judgments instead manifest Deep Rationality—biases that are not purely rational but that would have served functions for our ancestors (click here to see my earlier post on Deep Rationality).
So why do we get irrational when it comes to social comparison? My son Liam isn’t alone in this department, as it turns out. I do it myself. Whenever I hear about a colleague who makes more money than I do, I get irritated. At such times, it matters little that I make a very comfortable living. And if I took the time to check out my colleague’s work habits (which are sometimes reflected in having twice my number of publications or grant dollars, for example), I would probably realize they work harder than I do. All that matters is that someone is doing better than I am.
Part of the reason for invidious social comparisons is that other people sometimes judge us by our relative, rather than our absolute, resources. A young male competing for mates is not going to be judged by how much income he makes, but by whether the next guy makes twice as much. A teenager competing for the football team (which itself has mating implications) is not going to be judged by how fast he can run, but by how fast he can run relative to the other guys trying out for the team.
So, my son’s irrationality may not be so irrational after all. That doesn’t mean it isn’t surprising, and it doesn’t mean it isn’t annoying when you’re a parent. In this case, I stood firm on the smaller set of Legos for Liam, and he cried all the way home. The next day, when I could convince myself I wasn’t violating the rules of behavior modification, I invented a new goal for him to earn the larger prize. So much for rationality.
Related posts:
Deep Rationality
References
Buunk, A.P. & Mussweiler, T. (2001). New directions in social comparison research. European Journal of Social Psychology, 31, 467–607.
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1992). Cognitive adaptations for social exchange. In J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kenrick, D.T., Griskevicius, V., Sundie, J.M., Li, N.P., Li, Y.J. & Neuberg, S.L. (2009). Deep rationality: The evolutionary economics of decision-making. Social cognition, 27, 764-785.
Sugiyama, L., Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2002). Cross-cultural evidence of cognitive adaptations for social exchange among the Shiwiar of Ecuadorian Amazonia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(17), 11537-11542.
Image source: http://pelfusion.com/design/design-envy-make-it-work-for-you/
