Where are these people from?

this is a good question, however i don't think it matters as much as you think. In the example of the hypothetical, assuming everyone is financially well off, and not struggling in any sense. It would be reasonable to assume that they would probably uphold the agreement, however if even one of these people is worse off, it's vastly more likely that they will take all of it, with the benefit of most people their being ok with it.

It would definitely be interesting to see the difference in the western/eastern thinking, in this experiment though. I'm sure that would yield results.

I think the better way to conceptualize the hypothetical here would be to assume that at least one, probably 2 or 3 people are really struggling financially and would significant benefit from having the 10k, as opposed to the 1k. They would be significantly more likely to up and take the money.

But of course this is a hypothetical, not a real world example, so the application of it is countries and governments, with an entire humans history worth of the same stuff already happening, under the guise of improved living conditions or whatever. It becomes significantly more conceivable that one country, out of the hundreds would significantly abuse this scenario, and if nobody exists as a push-back force (i.e. some sort of global military projection force) the rest of the world is basically at the whims of the country in question.

A Native American tribe of 10 people would probably coordinate to be able to split the money, or even to invest collectively in their own village for example. A group of 10 New York executives with survival of the fittest mentality would probably act like you described.

this would definitely work out well, assuming one of them isn't insane, but this is like the hypothetical being based on 10 people from one single country, as opposed to like, 10 separate countries. Who don't really know each other that well. It's a lot more disconnected than you would think.