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Someone who gives a lot when it's cheap and keeps most of the pie for himself when giving is expensive focuses on efficiency: He's making sure the maximum amount is paid out to him and his partner combined. Someone who keeps 80% of the pie when it would be cheap to give is more focused on equality. Someone who always keeps everything, regardless of the price of giving, is just plain selfish, the very embodiment of the rational, self-interested Homo economicus.
I believe that this is incorretectly stated and I bolded the error. Someone focussed on equality would keep giving -- regardless of cost -- until they and their partner had the same amount, or nearly so.
The study took place right after the classes. Do these attitudes have permanence... or even tenacity or longevity....?
The partner was apparently defined as "your partner" not "a stranger" or "your enemy." Anyone who deprives their partner should expect a "payback." That is not economic behavior, and it explains why many economic (or other) partnerships fail.
I would like to see the numbers. Seventy is not a large number. I would like to interview those who acted differently than their teaching.
This is Yale Law School. Yet, these people just did what they were told, without thinking? If they had an altruist professor, they gave heavily, and so on? What does that say for Yale Law School? I saw something like this at the University of Michigan Law School. For one of my crim classes, we got extra credit to participate as jurors at a U of M Law mock trial. Some of the jurors were U of M undergrads. First of all, few of the lawyers -- defense or prosecution -- showed much acumen. They were more like high school debaters, nervous, unprepared. What points they scored were against each other, rather than trying to convince the jury. (Again, these were law school students: the best of the best, with four-year degrees to their credit... supposedly....) In the jury room, I failed to convince the jurors that police testimony and eye-witness testimony are alike unreliable. (Facts were evenly divided for this exercise.) The kids were all suburbanites. They never worked for anything of their own. This is why I chose to go to Eastern Michigan and would have taken Wayne State next. You go to an urban school and the kids there have their own drawbacks, but being naive is not one of them. Neither is being impressionable. I cannot think of a single classroom colleague who said, "I never thought of that..." Their minds are all made up, certainly from the inside. I wonder what is on the inside of those Ivy Leaguers.
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