If someone offered you thirty dollars for free, would you take it? Most people would not, and the reason is incredibly revealing.
The rules of the game are simple; take $100 and two people. One is the banker who decides how the money will be divided between the two. The banker can choose any amount to keep for himself.
The only catch? He can only make one offer, and the other person can accept his offer or say no to it, in which case neither player gets any money.
As Eban Pagan shares, the test has been given in various countries and in various cultures and the results are consistent and fascinating.
Many people feel the pressure to split the money evenly, and both players walk away with fifty dollars each.
However, there are a number of bankers who believe that since they are in control of the game, they deserve more money. After all, they feel they are being generous offering the other player any money at all, even though they are not playing with their own money to begin with.
With this belief system, it is not uncommon for the banker to feel entitled to a larger cut and offer to split the money sixty forty. In this case, though feeling somewhat slighted, the receiver almost always accepted the offer and walked away with $40 while the banker kept $60.
It is at this point that things got even more interesting. Some bankers tried to go even further to keep more of the free money for themselves. They decided they were entitled to a bigger slice of the pie, and offered the other player thirty dollars while they kept seventy dollars to themselves.
Remember, if the offer is rejected by the other player, neither person gets any money.
And it was precisely here that people's ideas about what is fair came into play. In every case this was the cut off point and each player put into this scenario rejected the banker's offer and both players walked away with nothing.
When the researchers asked why the other player rejected the banker's offer, in each case they said they would rather have nothing than to watch the other guy get so much more than they would have.
In summary, even though they could have had thirty free dollars, they said it was too difficult to feel like they were receiving the short end of the stick. At that point it became more important to ensure the other guy didn't get too far ahead.
Researchers labeled this 70/30 mark the "justice mechanism." It is where people drew the line at what they felt was fair.
As Eban Pagan shares, it is also one of the reasons many people never reach their own goals. Because instead of focusing on what they could obtain they spend all their energy anxious that somebody else might be getting ahead.
What is the solution? Learn to celebrate when other people succeed, and learn to stop comparing your own life with anyone else. Simply put, come to love receiving the short end of the stick. If you can stop competing with other people and learn to love getting less, the paradox is that you will always walk away with more.