Kind of you
Compassion Training Alters Altruism and Neural Responses to Suffering
Helen Weng et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Compassion is a key motivator of altruistic behavior, but little is known about individuals' capacity to cultivate compassion through training. We examined whether compassion may be systematically trained by testing whether (a) short-term compassion training increases altruistic behavior and (b) individual differences in altruism are associated with training-induced changes in neural responses to suffering. In healthy adults, we found that compassion training increased altruistic redistribution of funds to a victim encountered outside of the training context. Furthermore, increased altruistic behavior after compassion training was associated with altered activation in brain regions implicated in social cognition and emotion regulation, including the inferior parietal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and in DLPFC connectivity with the nucleus accumbens. These results suggest that compassion can be cultivated with training and that greater altruistic behavior may emerge from increased engagement of neural systems implicated in understanding the suffering of other people, executive and emotional control, and reward processing.
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Sarah Francis Smith et al.
Journal of Research in Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the relation between psychopathy, especially its fearless dominance dimension, and heroism in two undergraduate samples (N=124 and 119), a community sample (N=457) and 42 U.S. presidents. The first undergraduate and community sample revealed significant positive correlations between fearless dominance and heroism and altruism toward strangers; the presidential sample provided some evidence for an association between fearless dominance and war heroism. In the second undergraduate sample, fearless dominance was related only to altruism toward strangers; heroism was instead significantly positively correlated with the impulsive antisociality component of psychopathy. These findings raise the possibility that some psychopathic personality traits are modestly associated with heightened levels of heroic altruism, and raise questions for future research on the personality correlates of heroism.
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Tobias Greitemeyer & Dirk Mügge
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The bystander effect, the phenomenon that the (real or imagined) presence of others inhibits helping, has often been ascribed to bystanders' apathy. In the present research, we demonstrate that the occurrence of the bystander effect has rational roots. Three studies reveal that the presence of other bystanders does not inhibit helping when effective helping requires more than one help-giver. Mediation analyses showed that the bystander effect did not occur when many responses were needed because bystanders did not shift responsibility to others when in the presence of other bystanders. These findings suggest that the rational considerations underlying the bystander effect can mitigate the effects of the presence of other bystanders on helping behaviour when more than one help-giver is needed.
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Natural-field dictator game shows no altruistic giving
Jeffrey Winking & Nicholas Mizer
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Economic experiments are increasingly being used in a number of research areas and are a major source of data guiding the debate surrounding the nature of human prosociality. The degree to which experiment behavior accurately reflects external behavior, however, has long been debated. A number of recent studies have revealed just how remarkably sensitive participants are to cues of a lack of anonymity. Similarly, others have suggested that the very structure of the experimental context induces participants to choose prosocial options. In order to truly create anonymous conditions and to eliminate the effects of experimental contexts, participants must not be aware of their participation. Here, I present the results of a natural-field Dictator Game in which participants are presented with a believable endowment and provided an opportunity to divide the endowment with a stranger without knowing that they are taking part in an experiment. No participants gave any portion of the endowment to the stranger. Baseline frequencies of prosocial behaviors exhibited under experimental contexts might therefore be substantially inflated compared to those exhibited under natural contexts.
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The external validity of giving in the dictator game
Axel Franzen & Sonja Pointner
Experimental Economics, June 2013, Pages 155-169
Abstract:
We investigate the external validity of giving in the dictator game by using the misdirected letter technique in a within-subject design. First, subjects participated in standard dictator games (double blind) conducted in labs in two different studies. Second, after four to five weeks (study 1) or two years (study 2), we delivered prepared letters to the same subjects. The envelopes and the contents of the letters were designed to create the impression that they were misdirected by the mail delivery service. The letters contained 10 Euros (20 Swiss Francs in study 2) corresponding to the endowment of the in-lab experiments. We observe in both studies that subjects who showed other-regarding behavior in the lab returned the misdirected letters more often than subjects giving nothing, suggesting that in-lab behavior is related to behavior in the field.
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Why Do People Volunteer? An Experimental Analysis of Preferences for Time Donations
Alexander Brown, Jonathan Meer & Forrest Williams
NBER Working Paper, May 2013
Abstract:
We conduct a laboratory experiment to test if there are differences in behavior when subjects can donate either time or money to charity. Our subjects perform an effort task to earn money. In one condition they can have their efforts accrue to a charity instead of themselves. In other conditions subjects may only earn money for their private account but then donate it to a charity. We vary the timing and availability of donation opportunities in the monetary donation settings to test the impact of subtle solicitation pressure. We find that subjects with more opportunities to donate will donate more often and in larger amounts. Further, subjects giving effort to charity give far more than subjects who give monetary donations - between two and five times as much, on average. We posit that this difference is driven by different warm glow from the two donation types.
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Perceived Utility (not Sympathy) Mediates the Proportion Dominance Effect in Helping Decisions
Arvid Erlandsson, Fredrik Björklund & Martin Bäckström
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, forthcoming
Abstract:
The proportion dominance effect (PDE) refers to a higher motivation to help when the victims are part of a small (you can help 56 out of 60) rather than a large (you can help 56 out of 560) reference group. In two studies using different experimental paradigms, we investigated possible mediators of the PDE. Study 1 (N = 168) was conducted in three separate steps in order to test each link of the mediator model independently. Students read six vignettes where it was possible to help a fixed number of victims but where the size of the reference group was either small or large. When the reference group was small, helping motivation and perceived utility were higher, whereas sympathy toward the victims and perceived rights were not. A within-subject mediation analysis showed that perceived utility mediated the PDE. Study 2 (N = 36) presented four versions of a single helping situation in a joint evaluation mode where the size of the reference group became gradually smaller in each version. All participants compared and responded to each version. Helping motivation increased as the reference group became smaller, and this effect was mediated by perceived utility rather than by distress, sympathy, or perceived responsibilities. Our results suggest that unlike, for example, the identifiability and singularity effects, which have been suggested to be mediated by emotional reactions, the PDE is mediated by perceived utility.
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Small is beautiful - Experimental evidence of donors' preferences for charities
Sarah Borgloh, Astrid Dannenberg & Bodo Aretz
Economics Letters, August 2013, Pages 242-244
Abstract:
This paper studies the effect of information about a charity's size on individuals' donations to that charity. We conducted a framed field experiment with a non-student sample, in which subjects had the opportunity to donate to various charitable causes. The results show that if subjects are to choose between large organizations with high annual revenues and small organizations with low revenues, they prefer the small organizations, supporting thereby the predictions of the impact philanthropy model.
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Leif Rydstedt & Johan Österberg
Psychological Reports, April 2013, Pages 678-688
Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to assess personality traits, psychological fitness, and hardiness among conscript soldiers volunteering for international missions (n = 146), by comparing them with conscripts from the same year class and unit who did not apply for international missions (n = 275). The sample consisted of all mandatory enlisted soldiers assigned to a supply and maintenance regiment. There were no demographic differences between the groups. The volunteers reported greater stress tolerance, concern for others, extraversion, and self-confidence than the non-volunteers. There were no differences between the groups in orderliness, temper instability, or independence. Volunteers repeatedly reported greater psychological fitness for military missions and greater hardiness over the period of military service compared to the non-volunteers.
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The ultimate sacrifice: Perceived peer honor predicts troops' willingness to risk their lives
David Mandel & Amrit Litt
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, May 2013, Pages 375-388
Abstract:
Honor is a central concept in the profession of arms. The present study of 2,254 Canadian Forces (CF) members examined how they viewed the honor of their peers at ranks below, at, or above their own. Although rank is itself a form of vertical honor, participants' mean assessments of honor were inversely related to these relative-rank distinctions. As well, averaged across vertical honor, the assessed honor of other CF members directly predicted their willingness to risk their lives in combat operations. This effect was fully mediated by participants' affective commitment to the CF and it was partially mediated by their sense of duty. The findings show that how professionals perceive the honor of their peers does not simply follow vertical indices of honor, and that those perceptions predict attitudinal states (e.g., affective commitment) and behavioral intentions (willingness to risk one's life to perform one's duties).
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Jon Anderson et al.
Experimental Economics, June 2013, Pages 170-189
Abstract:
We measure the other-regarding behavior in samples from three related populations in the upper Midwest of the United States: college students, non-student adults from the community surrounding the college, and adult trainee truckers in a residential training program. The use of typical experimental economics recruitment procedures made the first two groups substantially self-selected. Because the context reduced the opportunity cost of participating dramatically, 91 % of the adult trainees solicited participated, leaving little scope for self-selection in this sample. We find no differences in the elicited other-regarding preferences between the self-selected adults and the adult trainees, suggesting that selection is unlikely to bias inferences about the prevalence of other-regarding preferences among non-student adult subjects. Our data also reject the more specific hypothesis that approval-seeking subjects are the ones most likely to select into experiments. Finally, we observe a large difference between self-selected college students and self-selected adults: the students appear considerably less pro-social.
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Do Grants to Charities Crowd Out Other Income? Evidence from the UK
James Andreoni, Abigail Payne & Sarah Smith
NBER Working Paper, April 2013
Abstract:
We present new evidence on the effect of grants on charities' incomes. We employ a novel identification strategy, focusing on charities that applied for lottery grant funding and comparing outcomes for successful and unsuccessful applicants. Overall, grants do not crowd out other income but the effect of grant-funding is not uniform. Looking in more detail we show first, that the positive effects of receiving a grant can persist for several years post-award; second, that grants have a stronger positive effect for small charities; and, third, that grants may have a more positive effect when they provide seed funding.
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Too smart to be selfish? Measures of cognitive ability, social preferences, and consistency
Chia-Ching Chen et al.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, June 2013, Pages 112-122
Abstract:
Although there is an increasing interest in examining the relationship between cognitive ability and economic behavior, less is known about the relationship between cognitive ability and social preferences. We investigate the relationship between consequential measures of cognitive ability and measures of social preferences. We have data on a series of small-stakes dictator-type decisions, known as Social Value Orientation (SVO), in addition to choices in a larger-stakes dictator game. We also have access to the grade point averages (GPA) and SAT (formerly referred to as the Scholastic Aptitude Test) outcomes of our subjects. We find that subjects who perform better on the Math portion of the SAT are more generous in both the dictator game and the SVO measure. By contrast we find that subjects with a higher GPA are more selfish in the dictator game and more generous according to the SVO. We also find some evidence that the subjects with higher GPA and higher SAT outcomes offer more consistent responses. Our results involving GPA and social preferences complement previous work which employ measures of cognitive ability which are sensitive to the intrinsic motivation of the subject. Our results involving SAT scores are without precedent in the literature and suggest that measures of cognitive ability, which are less sensitive to the intrinsic motivation of the subject, are positively related to generosity.
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Identifying Social Norms Using Coordination Games: Why Does Dictator Game Sharing Vary?
Erin Krupka & Roberto Weber
Journal of the European Economic Association, June 2013, Pages 495-524
Abstract:
We introduce an incentivized elicitation method for identifying social norms that uses simple coordination games. We demonstrate that concern for the norms we elicit and for money predict changes in behavior across several variants of the dictator game, including data from a novel experiment and from prior published laboratory studies, that are unaccounted for by most current theories of social preferences. Moreover, we find that the importance of social norm compliance and of monetary considerations is fairly constant across different experiments. This consistency allows prediction of treatment effects across experiments, and implies that subjects have a generally stable willingness to sacrifice money to take behaviors that are socially appropriate.