A veil of ignorance can promote fairness in a mammal society
dc.contributor.author | Marshall, HH | |
dc.contributor.author | Johnstone, RA | |
dc.contributor.author | Thompson, FJ | |
dc.contributor.author | Nichols, HJ | |
dc.contributor.author | Wells, D | |
dc.contributor.author | Hoffman, JJ | |
dc.contributor.author | Kalema-Zikusoka, G | |
dc.contributor.author | Sanderson, JL | |
dc.contributor.author | Vitikainen, EIK | |
dc.contributor.author | Blount, JD | |
dc.contributor.author | Cant, MA | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2021-05-19T08:58:40Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2021-06-23 | |
dc.description.abstract | 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 equalised their survival to adulthood. Our findings suggest that a classic idea of moral philosophy also applies to the evolution of cooperation in biological systems. | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | European Research Council (ERC) | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Vol. 12, article 3717. | |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1038/s41467-021-23910-6 | |
dc.identifier.grantnumber | 309249 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.grantnumber | NE/N011171/1 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.grantnumber | HO 5122/5-1 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/125751 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | Nature Research | en_GB |
dc.relation.url | https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14459151 | en_GB |
dc.rights | © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. | en_GB |
dc.title | A veil of ignorance can promote fairness in a mammal society | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2021-05-19T08:58:40Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 2041-1723 | |
dc.description | This is the final version. Available from Springer Nature via the DOI in this record. | en_GB |
dc.description | Data availability. The data supporting this study are available from the Figshare repository at dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14459151. Source data are provided with this paper. | en_GB |
dc.description | Code availability. The analysis code supporting this study are available from the Figshare repository at dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14459151 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.journal | Nature Communications | en_GB |
dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | en_GB |
dcterms.dateAccepted | 2021-05-13 | |
exeter.funder | ::Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) | en_GB |
exeter.funder | ::European Commission | en_GB |
exeter.funder | ::Royal Society (Government) | en_GB |
rioxxterms.version | VoR | en_GB |
rioxxterms.licenseref.startdate | 2021-05-13 | |
rioxxterms.type | Journal Article/Review | en_GB |
refterms.dateFCD | 2021-05-18T19:29:23Z | |
refterms.versionFCD | AM | |
refterms.dateFOA | 2021-06-24T08:49:49Z | |
refterms.panel | A | en_GB |
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