I just realized that I did a really poor job explaining he study I'm talking about. Lol. I was referring to the study known as the "ultimatum game." In it, two people have to split a sum of money and one participant makes an offer how the money will be split. If the second participant accepts the offer both recieve the amount of money provided by the original offer. If the offer is rejected then neither participant receives anything. Both participants are aware of the terms before the offer is made. In most cases participants behave fairly making offers at 40-50% split and generally, offers below 30% are rejected. Despite the fact that rejecting the offer is actually an irrational behavior, participants generally will take the punishment of receiving nothing in order to punish the other person for being unfair. In the case of psychopaths, they often accept unfair distributions, even very unfair ones. These participants generally saw any offer as a win for them - "money in their pocket."
Moral of the story: It's more rational to take the money regardless of the fairness of the offer but it's not socially cooperative, so the average person will typically reject an unfair distribution.
The study reminded me of your article because of the social cooperation aspect of it and the accepting punishment in order to punish others aspect.
Enjoy the rest of your day as well :)
Posted using Partiko Android
Oh, I see ... Thank you for taking the time to explain things further @leaky20 :)