A veil of ignorance can promote fairness in a mammal society.
A veil of ignorance can promote fairness in a mammal society.
复制标题
无知之幕可以促进哺乳动物社会的公平。
DOI:
10.1038/s41467-021-23910-6
复制
发表时间:
2021-06-23
影响因子:
16.6
通讯作者:
Cant MA
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
Marshall HH;Johnstone RA;Thompson FJ;Nichols HJ;Wells D;Hoffman JI;Kalema-Zikusoka G;Sanderson JL;Vitikainen EIK;Blount JD;Cant MA
Rawls argued that fairness in human societies can be achieved if decisions about the distribution of societal rewards are made from behind a veil of ignorance, which obscures the personal gains that result. Whether ignorance promotes fairness in animal societies, that is, the distribution of resources to reduce inequality, is unknown. Here we show experimentally that cooperatively breeding banded mongooses, acting from behind a veil of ignorance over kinship, allocate postnatal care in a way that reduces inequality among offspring, in the manner predicted by a Rawlsian model of cooperation. In this society synchronized reproduction leaves adults in a group ignorant of the individual parentage of their communal young. We provisioned half of the mothers in each mongoose group during pregnancy, leaving the other half as matched controls, thus increasing inequality among mothers and increasing the amount of variation in offspring birth weight in communal litters. After birth, fed mothers provided extra care to the offspring of unfed mothers, not their own young, which levelled up initial size inequalities among the offspring and equalized their survival to adulthood. Our findings suggest that a classic idea of moral philosophy also applies to the evolution of cooperation in biological systems. Obscuring knowledge of personal gains from individuals can theoretically maintain fairness in a cooperative group. Experiments show that wild, cooperatively breeding banded mongooses uncertain of kinship allocate postnatal care in a way that reduces inequality among offspring, suggesting a classic idea of moral philosophy can apply in biological systems.
登录
查看更多内容
影响因子:
2
作者:
HAIG, D;GRAFEN, A
通讯作者:
GRAFEN, A
DOI:
10.1073/pnas.1400819111
发表时间:
2014-07-22
影响因子:
11.1
作者:
Binmore, Kenneth
通讯作者:
Binmore, Kenneth
DOI:
10.1073/pnas.1312626111
发表时间:
2014-01-07
影响因子:
11.1
作者:
Cant, Michael A.;Nichols, Hazel J.;Hodge, Sarah J.
通讯作者:
Hodge, Sarah J.
影响因子:
2.3
作者:
Gilchrist, Jason S.;Russell, Andrew F.
通讯作者:
Russell, Andrew F.
影响因子:
2.4
作者:
Gilchrist, JS
通讯作者:
Gilchrist, JS