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Human beings have an innate drive for fair play, a research has found. 

According to the research, when perceived as unfair, people would reject offers irrespective of the level of their desperation. They would prefer not having something, rather than accepting an unfair deal. The people would reject an offer of water, even if they are severely thirsty, if they perceive the offer to be unfair, the study said.

The findings imply how humans make decisions. 

People often have the tendency to bargain while buying things and they have a tendency to reject unfair offers. They would prefer walking away with nothing rather than accepting a low offer knowing their counterpart is taking home more cash. 

However, chimpanzees, closest to human intelligence, would accept any offer regardless of any subjective idea of 'fairness'. Researchers wanted to see if it was the same with humans and if they would accept unfair offers when bargaining for basic physiological need, such as food, water or sex, Medical Xpress reported. 

For the study, researchers recruited 21 healthy participants and made 11 of them thirsty by drip-feeding them a salty solution, while others were given an isotonic solution which hardly had any effect on their level of thirst. To know exactly how thirsty participants were, they measured the salt concentration in the blood of participants. 

The participants were then told that they will be playing a game where two participants randomly selected would split of a 500ml bottle of water that could be consumed immediately.

They were told that while one participant would be the 'Proposer,' and decide how the bottle should be split, the other would be a 'Responder' who could either accept the split or reject it, in which case, both participants would get nothing. 

In reality, all of the participants played the part of the Responder. 

They were given two glasses of water with a highly unequal offer. The glass offered to them had very less water while they were told that the glass with much more water was kept by the Proposer for himself. The responders had fifteen seconds to decide if they wanted to accept or reject the offer. 

It was found that, unlike chimpanzees, the human participants tended to reject the highly unfair offer, even though they were very thirsty. However, they were more likely to accept the offer if they subjectively felt that they were thirsty, the report said.

"Whether or not, fairness is a uniquely human motivation has been a source of controversy. These findings show that humans, unlike even our closest relatives chimpanzees, reject an unfair offer of a primary reward like food or water - and will do that even when severely thirsty. However, we also show this fairness motivation is traded-off against self-interest, and that this self-interest is not determined by how their objective need for water but instead by their subjective perception of thirst. These findings are interesting for understanding how subjective feelings of fairness and self-interested need impact on everyday decisions, for example in the labor market," Dr Nick Wright, who led the study, explained.