What if Westerners really are different--not necessarily superior, or more civilized, or any such imperialistic notion--just different. That's the subject addressed in a recent study.  "The Ultimatum Game," explains Adam McDowell of Canadian publication the National Post, "works like this: You are given $100 and asked to share it with someone else. You can offer that person any amount and if he accepts the offer, you each get to keep your share. If he rejects your offer, you both walk away empty-handed."

North Americans typically offer roughly half of the money, and will typically accept only about ten dollars less than half of the total. But that's not how "most of humanity" would do it. The Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon, it turns out, find "the idea of offering half your money downright weird--and rejecting an insultingly low offer even weirder."
Cultural psychologist Will Benning, McDowell points out, is skeptical: there's "a human tendency ... to regard one's own group as unique. ... 'The point isn't that our group is not special, it's that each group is special in its own unique way.'"

That doesn't, though, negate the takeaway from the UBC team's work, which, as McDowell reports, is this: if you're going to do an experiment from which you draw broad conclusions about humanity, you might not want to test only Americans. Read the full, intriguing article here.

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Heather Horn