There’s an obvious lesson in justice to be learned from our fellow primate, the monkey, when it comes to how even the lower functioning among us perceive fairness.
That’s how I view the results of a revealing experiment that helps explain why I see so much resentment and frustration with perceived injustices among the human race.
Researchers at Emory University placed two monkeys in adjacent plastic cages where each could easily watch the other. In exchange for providing their human researchers with a small rock inside their cage (representing “work”), each monkey received an equal slice of cucumber, which they liked just fine. All was just hunky-dory as the experiment continued for a few minutes. The monkeys seemed quite satisfied with their tasty rewards.
But then the wily humans changed the game.
Rather than giving one monkey the familiar cucumber slice, the second one received a grape. It seems monkeys deem the sugary grape preferable to cucumbers. The first monkey was none too pleased. In fact, after one more grape was dispensed to his buddy, the first monkey began to loudly and physically complain, even tossing the cucumber he was enjoying moments earlier back at the researchers through holes in the cage.
In his resentment, he even stopped providing the rock, instead shoving his arm insistently outside through a hole to make it clear that he too, by gosh, deserved a grape for performing the identical task.
So what does that simple experiment say about us and the ways we react emotionally when we feel unjustly slighted or shorted? Surely you also have witnessed this sort of cucumber-versus-grape reward thing in your personal and work lives. For me, this gut-level emotional response helps explain those 1 percent versus 99 percent Wall Street protests and resentments in workplaces everywhere.
A natural gut reaction occurs inside most of us when we feel our worth is devalued in comparison with peers, siblings and others.
And I suspect in many cases, rational explanations for disparities (which require elevated mental capacities) are ignored even within supposedly higher-functioning animals. It’s just so much easier (and feels better) to go with the purely emotional reaction of our “monkey mind” than to try and understand why discrepancies in compensation are a part of life for any number of reasons, legitimate or not.
It also explains why wise parents make sure to reward each of their children equally when the time for rewards and gifts is at hand. This monkey study clearly explains the kind of reaction we can expect when we don’t.
The experiment also shows why those who receive accolades for doing their job are more resented than appreciated by most peers and colleagues, many of whom (like that cucumber monkey) naturally believe the “grape” given to another should rightfully have been theirs.
Little wonder that our fundamental sense of fair play and justice keeps us humans continually stirred up in homes, workplaces and even nations across the globe.
No surprise
I wasn’t surprised that Administrative Law Judge Connie Griffith, after months, finally approved SWEPCO’s controversial 345-kilovolt transmission line for 56 miles across the pristine Ozarks to the Kings River. The outcome of all this was never in doubt to me, since I know of no one with the intestinal fortitude capable of actually telling a utility company no.
So now, many good people of Missouri doubtlessly will begin to join the long and loud complaints by the nonprofit Save the Ozarks and others over the judge’s approved pathway that leads for some 25 miles across their southernmost border before plunging downward past the charming community of Beaver, Ark., and on to the Kings River Station.
Save the Ozarks’ members say it’s only begun the good fight to preserve the magnificence of the mountains. Missouri has yet to approve anything connected with the plan. The group’s lead attorney, Mick Harrison, says he presented evidence showing this high-voltage line is unnecessary and the judge’s ruling is “factually and legally incorrect.” Stay tuned to this electrifying saga.
Housecleaning
First, a friendly invitation to visit my blog listed below to peruse my annual List of Favorites for 2013. You might even have a grape waiting.
Secondly, a heartfelt thanks to author Suzette Martinez Standring, for the grape she kindly handed me by including my work along with 15 other columnists in her new book, The Art of Opinion Writing: Insider Secrets from Top Op-Ed Columnists. Being in the company of others who also share opinions such as Cal Thomas, Kathleen Parker and Ellen Goodman surely tastes better than a slice of cucumber.
Finally today, a seedless grape for all who suffer, as I once did, with the aggravation of restless-leg syndrome.
Don’t ask me to explain how it works, but a friend once advised me to slip a bar of soap between my mattress and bed sheet near where my legs rest. I did and and voila! No more restless legs. I’ve since heard this bizarre remedy repeated even across the Internet. I can’t guarantee anything. Yet it’s worked for me. Ain’t this life thing mysterious, cucumbers and all?
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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.
Editorial, Pages 77 on 01/26/2014