Turn down free money to punish an unfair split? Most people do exactly that.

In Werner Guth's 1982 ultimatum game, one player proposes how to split a sum of money and the other can accept or reject it — rejecting means both walk away with nothing. A purely self-interested responder should accept any offer above zero, but most people reject offers below roughly 20-30% of the pot, giving up their own payout just to punish an unfair split. The result has held up across decades of replications in dozens of countries.

— Werner Guth, Rolf Schmittberger & Bernd Schwarze, An Experimental Analysis of Ultimatum Bargaining — Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 1982

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