"The fact that participants were willing to substitute part of a food item for the mere prospect of a relatively small monetary award is interesting," says Reimann.
In the Aamazon, for example, access to entire regions would depend on the willingness of local crew members and other assistants to enter areas inhabited by relatively powerful Amerindian groups.
Together, these pressures create incentives to present as gloomy a picture of Africa as possible in order to keep attention and money flowing, and to enlist journalists in disseminating that picture.
When researchers ask people whether they would rather be relatively richer than their peers even if that means they are absolutely worse off, the answer is yes.