Fairness is self-interested because stingy partners get abandoned.

Evidence

While we agree with Trivers that cooperating with genuinely moral motives may be advantageous, we attribute a somewhat different role to moral motivation in cooperation. In classic mutualistic theories, a moral disposition is typically seen as a psychological mechanism selected to motivate individuals to give resources to others. In a mutualistic approach based on social selection like the one we are exploring here, we stress that much cooperation is mutually beneficial so that self-serving motives might be enough to motivate individuals to share resources. Individuals have indeed very good incentive to be fair, for if they fail to offer equally advantageous deals to others, they will be left for more generous partners. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 69

Categorization

• CANDY: A clean one-liner for conversation: fair bargaining is selfish because unfair partners get dumped for more generous ones.
• XREF: Connects to the partner-choice mechanism (Baumard et al.) central to the reading purpose; the Japanese authorities’ coercion of apostasy as destruction of partnership options. — connects to: Fairness evolves from partner choice, not partner control — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 610

Related

• Fairness is not reducible to mutualistic partner choice. (similarity 0.89)
• Fairness rests on impartiality, not mutualistic cooperation. (similarity 0.89)
• Fairness evolves from partner choice, not partner control (similarity 0.87)
• Morality evolves from individual partner-choice competition, not group selection. (similarity 0.86)
• Morality evolved as a propensity for fair cost-benefit sharing among cooperators. (similarity 0.86)
• Morality may have evolved via partner choice over partner control (similarity 0.86)
• Fairness evolved to distribute payoffs by input, not equally. (similarity 0.85)
• A preference for fairness can directly favor equalitarianism in cooperation. (similarity 0.85)
• Morality is about fair cooperation, not maximizing welfare. (similarity 0.85)
• Partner selection produces genuine moral feelings, not just narrow self-interested cooperation. (similarity 0.85)
• Deriving fairness from bargaining power threatens to reduce moral norms to mere bargaining. (similarity 0.85)
• Partner choice predicts fair cooperation while group selection predicts utilitarian cooperation. (similarity 0.85)
• A disposition to fairness can evolve even when unshared, unlike a disposition to cooperate. (similarity 0.84)
• Partner-choice cooperation theory does not explain the intrinsic moral sense. (similarity 0.84)
• Morality evolved because fair partners were preferred in cooperative interactions (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Fairness evolves from partner choice, not partner control #expands (0.85) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 610