This post by Ed Yong is a follow on the experiment chronicled in the book Age of Empathy. Internet gives us this great privilege to follow seamlessly the stories we love.
"These new results show that capuchins react negatively to unequal rewards and are motivated neither by greed nor frustration. Capuchins hunt squirrels as a team and once food is found, they willingly share it out among the group. Their intolerance for unequal handouts would foster greater cooperation among monkey troupes by preventing any individuals from monopolising the spoils.
In other studies, pairs of capuchins who cooperate for unequal rewards do better in the long run if they swap who gets the lion's share. De Waal speculates that this need to share the spoils of a hunt could be the origin of our own disdain for inequality.
Even so, de Waal notes that the monkeys' aversion to injustice isn't on a par with humans. They don't like getting less than their peers, but they don't react to getting more. If anything, this worsens any inequality since monkeys that do badly end up shunning the task and its reward altogether, while the one that's better off continues to be rewarded.
It may be that in a more realistic situation, monkeys that were ripped off could just leave and find other social partners, but only further research would tell."
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