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Comment by Puts | Hacker News Reader

I would argue that perceptions of fairness and morale is not the same. In fact they can even be the opposite. When we grow up we learn that the world is not fair, and that even tough we where being mistreated we can not mistreat others to make it "fair". Morale is the ability to go against your gut feeling and do what is intellectually right.

Children have a strong perception of fairness. If cookies are being handled out there better be a cookie coming your way too. If you keep this mentality going into adulthood you are most likely a psychopath.

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> If you keep this mentality going into adulthood you are most likely a psychopath.

You make it sound like this is selfish. The toddlers aren't expecting a favorable treatment to themselves, they expect others to be fair towards everyone else.

I'd argue the real damage happens once toddlers lose their altruistic mentality and get into the selfish competitive mentality we enforce today. Keep in mind, this only happens as a form of natural selection, as those with these traits have a better chance at survival/success in this environment.

It's fundamental to remember that better fit doesn't mean better overall. As I've read once here on HN (one of those life changing sentences that I happen to read here every once in a while), if you have a stupid environment, you get a stupid fit.

"Be fair to me!" vs "Be fair to everyone!" are different impulses. The first is rooted in self, the second in community.

Also, perceived and actual fairness can have quite a gap between them. People often feel like they're being treated unfairly when an outcome is not favorable to them, even when they're being treated by exactly same rules as anyone else.

> If you keep this mentality going into adulthood you are most likely a psychopath.

Really? If my boss came into the break room and handed out Christmas bonuses to everyone except me, I'm a psychopath if I get pissed off?

Also, psychopaths don't react to stuff like this ... that's part of being a psychopath.

I imagine something more along the lines of somebody scratching an expensive car because of jealousy, but justified through some sense of unfairness.

Well, he certainly doesn't have to. There's no worldly force automatically granting you a bonus as well. But on the other hand there's no worldly force keeping you at your job either.

But if you feel you can demand complete fairness, then everybody else on this planet can too so why don't you give a "bonus" to someone homeless who doesn't have anything – even tough you didn't get one from your boss? That is true morale because it requires strength to exclude yourself from the equation.

> Well, he certainly doesn't have to.

Never said he did.

> But if you feel you can demand complete fairness,

Never said I did.

All I'm saying is that being pissed off that my boss was unfair doesn't make me a sociopath. Maybe immature, but even then it's, clearly, a natural response. The fact that Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $200B while people are homeless is more of an issue than how much I donate a year and also pisses me off.

Demanding that I don't have an emotional response to unfairness actually seems more sociopathic.

I don't agree with the GP either but your understanding of what it means to be a "psychopath" is even less correct. Psychopaths are highly impulsive and emotionally volatile. They would be far more likely to lash out in situations where they feel slighted than normal people would be.

There's this tendency (both among self-described high-functioning psychopaths and in the media) for people to think that psychopaths are highly rational and less emotional, but it's closer to the opposite - psychopaths are impulsively driven by the present emotions.

The main sense in which they are less emotional is that they react less emotionally than normal people to how other people feel and how they themselves would feel in the future. Because empathy generally acts as a check on your present impulses in most humans, this leads to more emotional, impulsive behavior, not less.

I'm using this definition of sociopath vs psychopath: https://www.verywellhealth.com/sociopath-vs-psychopath-chara...

I'm not saying psychopaths have no emotions at all, I'm saying psychopaths in general don't react to this kind of thing, unless it pays to react.

I've worked with sociopaths, psychopaths and narcissists in my career; psychopaths very much do not have "emotional, impulsive behaviour". At least, not at the CEO, SVP, Chief of Surgery, etc. levels. The type of behaviour you are talking about I have seen from narcissists (NPD) and sociopaths.

> If cookies are being handled out there better be a cookie coming your way too. If you keep this mentality going into adulthood you are most likely a psychopath.

Citation needed.

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