ABSTRACT
Acknowledgment: This chapter was supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to the first author.
One recent December, the first author came close to causing a new level of warfare between his daughters. The event began innocently enough. He was in the “Awesome Dad” mode, about to hand out chocolate caramels to his kids, both under the age of 10. The chocolates were wrapped in festive colors-red and green-and shaped like Christmas ornaments. The children had been enjoying them regularly, so there were only three left: two red, one green. The color of the wrapper made no difference in taste (as confirmed by Geoff ’s “randomly controlled taste tests”). Pulling them out of the bag, Geoff could almost anticipate the competition that was about to erupt over the single green chocolate, yet the experimentalist in him let the scene play out. Each child was quick to make her appeal for why she should get the green one, complete with accusations of favoritism (“But you gave her the special treat last time”), victimization (“You don’t care about me”), and deprivation (“I never even got to try the green one”). Even after being warned that continuing to protest would mean no one would receive any chocolate, they continued unabated. Each child would rather have no chocolate than let her sister receive the more attractive one.
