The frequently documented equal division convention is not derived from a more general deductive principle that could be applied to the similar bargaining games considered here. Conventions based on deductive principles emerge after 70 periods in 5 of 26 eight person cohorts. We found no economically significant differences between all male and all female cohorts. All rights reserved. Introduction Learning requires recognizing the similarity between the current instance of a situation and past instances.
Subjects interact using an evolutionary protocol.
Such an ambient convention would have to be more sophisticated than equal division, since equal division is not a feasible outcome ex post. Rather, it may demonstrate that subjects can learn to recognize either deductive principle in an environment that eliminates distracting and competing selection principles and coordinate their behavior on one of the two competing principles in small laboratory communities. This seems particularly so when referring to feelings about fairness. The experiment reported below varies the sex ratio. All male, all female, and mixed cohorts are used.