Risk Attitude of Primates, Experiment Conducting on Formosan Macaque behind Veil of Ignorance
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Ho, Tsung-Yu
Abstract
The veil of ignorance (VOI), behind which people allocate resources prior to learning their social positions, was introduced by John Rawls (1971). Preference over distributions may depend on a decision maker''s economic or social position. However, decisions made before learning his role are immune from being affected by his respective social position and hence reflect what truly constitutes a just distribution. These are termed as decisions or preferences behind VOI. Moreover, since behind VOI, the decision maker has to determine an institution of the society in which he would afterward live in without knowing his subsequent position, hence his risk preference plays a role too. We study the behavior of non-human primates, Formosan Rock Macaque (Macaca cyclopis), in the face of food decision problems. We conduct a class of modified dictator games in which a proposer chooses between two food allocations for itself and a companion, and measure the proposer''s preferences, including risk preference, inequality aversion, and preference behind VOI. Our data shows that subjects are strongly risk-loving, and they tend to choose equal distribution more frequently when they make the decision behind VOI. We therefore apply subjects'' social preference to explain the difference between their risk preference and preference behind VOI.
Subjects
behavioral experiment
non-human primates
Formosan Macaque
veil of ignorance
risk attitude
pro-social behavior
anti-social behavior
hierarchy
SDGs
Type
thesis
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