Chrome Extension
WeChat Mini Program
Use on ChatGLM

Beyond a binary theorizing of prosociality

arxiv(2024)

Cited 0|Views17
No score
Abstract
A stylized experiment, the public goods game, has taught us the peculiar reproducible fact that humans tend to contribute more to shared resources than expected from economically rational assumptions. There have been two competing explanations for this phenomenon: either contributing to the public good is an innate human trait (the prosocial preference hypothesis) or a transitory effect while learning the game (the confused learner hypothesis). We use large-scale experimental data from a novel experimental design to distinguish between these two hypotheses. By monitoring the effects of zealots (persistently cooperating bots) and varying the participants' awareness of them, we find a considerably more complex scenario than previously reported. People indeed have a prosocial bias, but not to the degree that they always forego taking action to increase their profit. While our findings end the simplistic theorizing of prosociality in the public goods game, an observed positive, cooperative response to zealots has actionable policy implications.
More
Translated text
AI Read Science
Must-Reading Tree
Example
Generate MRT to find the research sequence of this paper
Chat Paper
Summary is being generated by the instructions you defined