So nice
The Grateful Don't Cheat: Gratitude as a Fount of Virtue
David DeSteno et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Gratitude has been linked to behaviors involving the exchange of resources; it motivates people to repay debts to benefactors. However, given its links to self-control - itself a necessary factor for repaying debts - the possibility arises that gratitude might enhance other virtues unrelated to exchange that depend on an ability to resist temptation. Here, we examined gratitude's ability to function as a "parent" virtue by focusing on its ability to reduce cheating. Using real-time behavior-based measures of cheating, we demonstrated that gratitude, as opposed to neutrality and the more general positive emotional state of happiness, reduces cheating in both a controlled laboratory setting (N = 156) and a more anonymous online setting (N = 141). This finding suggests that not all moral qualities need to be studied in silos but, rather, that hierarchies exist wherein certain virtues might give rise to seemingly unrelated others.
On the psychology and economics of antisocial personality
Jan Engelmann et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do fundamental concepts from economics, such as individuals' preferences and beliefs, relate to equally fundamental concepts from psychology, such as relatively stable personality traits? Can personality traits help us better understand economic behavior across strategic contexts? We identify an antisocial personality profile and examine the role of strategic context (the "situation"), personality traits (the "person"), and their interaction on beliefs and behaviors in trust games. Antisocial individuals exhibit a specific combination of beliefs and preferences that is difficult to reconcile with a rational choice approach that assumes that beliefs about others' behaviors are formed rationally and therefore, independently from preferences. Variations in antisocial personality are associated with effect sizes that are as large as strong variations in strategic context. Antisocial individuals have lower trust in others unless they know that they can punish them. They are also substantially less trustworthy, believe that others are like themselves, and respond to the possibility of being sanctioned more strongly, suggesting that they anticipate severe punishment if they betray their partner's trust. Antisocial individuals are not simply acting in their economic self-interest, because they harshly punish those who do not reciprocate their trust, although that reduces their economic payoff, and they do so nonimpulsively and in a very calculated manner. Antisocial individuals honor others' trust significantly less (if they cannot be punished) but also, harshly punish those who betray their trust. Overall, it seems that antisocial individuals have beliefs and behaviors based on a view of the world that assumes that most others are as antisocial as they themselves are.
Born to Be Bad
Christopher Clifford, Jesse Ellis & William Christopher Gerken
University of Kentucky Working Paper, March 2019
Abstract:
Using a geographic measure of unethical culture developed by Parsons, Sulaeman and Titman (2018) and a novel dataset of financial advisors' childhood residences, we show that advisors who grow up in U.S. counties with less ethical cultures are more likely to commit misconduct as adults. Our identification strategy exploits variation in childhood backgrounds between advisors working together in the same branch office in adulthood, thereby overcoming the reflection problem. Our results are robust to controlling for other factors from the early-life experiences literature such as income, education, ethnicity and religiosity. We find that areas with high concentrations of advisors that hail from less ethical cultures have lower levels of household equity participation. Our findings have important implications for how regional cultural norms regarding misconduct evolve.
The impact of chronotype on prosocial behavior
Natalie Solomon & Jamie Zeitzer
PLoS ONE, April 2019
Introduction: Chronotype (morningness/eveningness) is associated with preference for the timing of many types of behavior, most notably sleep. Chronotype is also associated with differences in the timing of various physiologic events as well as aspects of personality. One aspect linked to personality, prosocial behavior, has not been studied before in the context of chronotype. There are many variables contributing to who, when, and why one human might help another and some of these factors appear fixed, while some change over time or with the environment. It was our intent to examine prosocial behavior in the context of chronotype and environment.
Methods: Randomly selected adults (N = 100, ages 18-72) were approached in a public space and asked to participate in a study. If the participants consented (n = 81), they completed the reduced Morning-Eveningness Questionnaire and the Stanford Sleepiness Scale, then prosocial behavior was assessed.
Results/Conclusions: We found that people exhibited greater prosocial behavior when they were studied further from their preferred time of day. This did not appear to be associated with subjective sleepiness or other environmental variables, such as ambient illumination. This suggests the importance of appreciating the differentiation between the same individual's prosocial behavior at different times of day. Future studies should aim at replicating this result in larger samples and across other measures of prosocial behavior.
Who delegates? Evidence from dictator games
Glynis Gawn & Robert Innes
Economics Letters, August 2019, Pages 186-189
Abstract:
We conduct and compare two binary dictator experiments in which the available payoff profiles are identical. In one of the games, selfish payoffs can be probabilistically implemented either via a delegate or directly; in the other game, the same payoffs can only be implemented by direct choice. We find that (1) the delegation option is almost entirely chosen by those who would otherwise be generous dictators, (2) the delegation option thereby leads to a greater overall propensity for selfish payoffs, and (3) in the delegation game, selfish dictators exhibit a net preference for direct vs. delegated decisions, consistent with recent research on decision rights.
I'll be there: Promises in the field
Rong Rong & Jared Barton
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
As promises are non-binding, they can be either fulfilled or broken. Previous lab and field research mostly examines the factors that explain fulfillment, as promising itself is difficult to randomly assign. We design a novel natural field experiment where subtle changes of words in an invitation email shifts the level of promise making among our subjects to test the causal effect of promises. Promises are positively related to experimental attendance, and using the invitation treatment as an instrumental variable, we recover a positive but imprecisely measured causal impact of promise making on behavior.