In the article they mentioned later that in gift-giving cultures receiving a gift make one indebted. They are rejecting the offers, not because they are too small, but because they are too big. The people offering as much as 60% are doing so to gain favours.

But wasn't the offers anonymous?

Maybe it is even worse this way: you get indebted to an unknown person!

Probably there is some heuristics at work, which gives the intuition that a too good split is somehow dangerous. (Similar to how people who are afraid of the dark try to avoid both caves and cellars. )

Wait, why would you ever refuse a gift?

I don't get that.

If someone offered me a dollar out of his million, I'd accept it and be very grateful.

Human beings are irrational and sometimes do things that aren't in their economic best interest out of principle or ethics. Think about it: if I murder somebody, then offer you $100 not to tell anyone, would you take the money? I certainly hope not.

And yet, from a strictly economic perspective, that's a fundamentally terrible decision. Not only will you lose $100, but you'd lose tons of time you could be working talking to the police, testifying in court, etc.

It seems that no one has mentioned that the effect of relative wealth might be severe also from a rationality point of view. In a more primitive environment, if your neighbor becomes too powerful, he might enslave or even kill you, so better keep him in his place.

Similarly, if you take the $100 and are silent, and protect the killer, you risk severe punishment if you are caught. Even if I agree that the decision is made based on moral conscience for most people rather than economic calculation (which might be the case for sociopaths), there is a rational basis for this. Fundamentally, to make sure that I don't get murdered myself by the murderer later, I better not comply with him, as he is proven to be ruthless. In addition, because other people are moral beings as well, $100 is a very small compensation for risking jail and being shunned for the rest of your life, a very bad economic decision.

    > Human beings are irrational and sometimes do things that
    > aren't in their economic best interest out of principle
    > or ethics.

Humans might be irrational sometimes, but this isn't one of those times. "Rationality" has no meaning outside of the context of a goal . . . the sentence I quoted makes it seem like you're saying people should only care about their economic (do you mean financial/material?) interests.

You also said

    > Think about it: if I murder somebody, then offer you $100
    > not to tell anyone, would you take the money? I certainly
    > hope not.

so it does seem you aren't actually suggesting that.

Talking about these things from a strictly economic perspective is always tricky, because it assumes that the economic value of things like morals and ethics are zero.

I think the problem is that it's somewhat difficult to set a monetary value on the value of abstract concepts such as morals and ethics more than anything else.

Either way, it sounds like we agree that there's a social contract that may cause individuals to act in a manner that isn't immediately economically advantageous.

Break it down this way. Its about the way people in different cultures reflexively parse incomplete information.

The issue is that you have unspoken assumptions - Its just some guy giving you a buck, no other costs/strings or concerns to deal with. Take buck, move on.

Now lets say you are in a gift giving culture, or even better, a "high-context culture".

Whose giving you the money? A buck? From a millionaire? Are there strings attached? Nothing is free so whats going on?

So on and so forth.

I get your point. Its summed up well in the article:

>>" “It just seemed ridiculous to the Machiguenga that you would reject an offer of free money,” says Henrich. “They just didn’t understand why anyone would sacrifice money to punish someone who had the good luck of getting to play the other role in the game.”"

I'll try and explain the counter point: Lets say you me and the researcher are playing this game. The researcher ponies up $1m and asks you to split it with me. Now, I view $1 million as the total gift. I also think you and me BOTH bring something to the table:

a) You: The decision making - which you value at $xa.

b) Me: The veto powers - which I value at some $ xb. The closer $(1m-xa) is to my xb, the more I want to do business with you. The farther apart the numbers are, I feel like you are not respecting the value I bring to the table. I don't want to do business with people that don't value my skills and respect my power.

I'm thinking that the Machiguenga and you don't really see (b) - you just see you at zero and anything above that as yay! Nothing wrong with that. I get that thinking too. Its the basis of the article - Americans are not the world.

It's dangerous to try to answer "why". I could easily rationalize an answer, but as the article shows, people's reactions are mostly cultural.

Keep in mind that the experiment is not framed as "Person A is giving you $X out of his money" but "Person A chooses the split that you and he get from the researcher's money." If it were marketed as a gift, responses to the experiment would probably be very different (including my own response.)

You might refuse if you're pre-commiting to fairness (which could be correct in some situations and decision theories).

It's not his million. It's the researcher's million, which the offerer is proposing a way to split.

The game is that if you refuse, the person loses their $999,999.

Which makes it even more horrifying. Why would you cause someone to lose something because they gave you some of it?

It's pure evil.

It's not their money "to lose".

Neither player has any right to the money until the game is over and the game isn't over until they've both made a decision. That's the difference between this game and a millionaire offering you money. You may be lucky to be offered anything in both cases but in one you are being screwed in the context of the game. It's a matter of returning the favor. It may not be the most economically sound decision but if the amount lost isn't significant to you, it doesn't matter.

> It's pure evil.

"markdown took $99 of $100?! He caused me to lose money. He's pure evil." No. It's not my money to lose but I don't like the way you played the game so I'll pass on the $1, thanks.