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- 2023
- Working Paper
'It Wouldn’t Have Mattered Anyway': When Overdetermined Outcomes Justify Our Sins
By: Stephanie C. Lin, Julian J. Zlatev and Dale T. Miller
We identify and document an “overdetermined outcome defense” which occurs when one learns
that circumstances besides one’s own actions were sufficient to produce a negative effect (e.g.,
deciding not to go to the gym, but later discovering that the gym had been...
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- 2023
- Working Paper
The Link Between Integrative Bargaining and Leadership Evaluations
By: Julian J. Zlatev and Francis J. Flynn
We draw from implicit leadership theory and the dual concern theory of conflict resolution to posit a link
between negotiation style and leadership evaluations. Specifically, we propose that individuals who are
more skilled at integrative, but not distributive,...
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- December 2022
- Article
'Just Letting You Know…': Underestimating Others' Desire for Constructive Feedback
By: Nicole Abi-Esber, Jennifer E. Abel, Juliana Schroeder and Francesca Gino
People often avoid giving feedback to others even when it would help fix a problem immediately. Indeed, in a pilot field study (N=155), only 2.6% of individuals provided feedback to survey administrators that the administrators had food or marker on their faces....
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- 2022
- Working Paper
The Routledge Handbook of Digital Consumption, Chapter 41: The Internet’s Effects on Consumption: Useful, Harmful, Playful
By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
This chapter considers how digital culture has changed over the past decade, as the internet has grown its scope and user base. Billions around the world connect daily to an ever-expanding set of applications. A framework for thinking about digital effects is offered:...
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- January 10, 2022
- Article
The Link Between Income, Income Inequality, and Prosocial Behavior Around the World: A Multiverse Approach
By: Lucia Macchia and Ashley V. Whillans
The questions of whether high-income individuals are more prosocial than low-income individuals and whether income inequality moderates this effect have received extensive attention. We shed new light on this topic by analyzing a large-scale dataset with a...
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- 2021
- Article
Don't Get It or Don't Spread It: Comparing Self-interested versus Prosocial Motivations for COVID-19 Prevention Behaviors
By: Jillian J. Jordan, Erez Yoeli and David Rand
COVID-19 prevention behaviors may be seen as self-interested or prosocial. Using American samples from MTurk and Prolific (total n = 6,850), we investigated which framing is more effective—and motivation is stronger—for fostering prevention behavior intentions. We...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
'Just Letting You Know…': Underestimating Others' Desire for Constructive Feedback
By: Nicole Abi-Esber, Jennifer Abel, Juliana Schroeder and Francesca Gino
People often avoid giving feedback to others even when it would help fix a problem immediately. Indeed, in a pilot field study (N=155), only 2.6% of individuals provided feedback to survey administrators that the administrators had food or marker on their faces....
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Keywords:
Feedback;
Helping;
Prosocial Behavior;
Relationships;
Social Psychology;
Theory;
Perception
- March 2021
- Article
Opting-in to Prosocial Incentives
By: Daniel Schwartz, Elizabeth A. Keenan, Alex Imas and Ayelet Gneezy
The design of effective incentive schemes that are both successful in motivating employees and keeping down costs is of critical importance. Research has demonstrated that prosocial incentives, where individuals’ effort benefits a charitable organization, can sometimes...
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- February 2021
- Article
I Own, So I Help Out: How Psychological Ownership Increases Prosocial Behavior
By: Ata Jami, Maryam Kouchaki and Francesca Gino
This article explores the consequences of psychological ownership going beyond the specific relationship with the possession to guide behavior in unrelated situations. Across seven studies, we find that psychological ownership leads to a boost in self-esteem, which...
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Keywords:
Psychological Ownership;
Prosocial Behavior;
Altruism;
Self-Esteem;
Materialism;
Behavior;
Attitudes
- 2021
- Article
Helping and Happiness: A Review and Guide for Public Policy
By: Lara B. Aknin and Ashley V. Whillans
Perhaps one of the most reaffirming findings to emerge over the past several decades is that humans not only engage in generous behavior, they also appear to experience pleasure from doing so. Yet not all acts of helping lead to greater happiness. Here, we review the...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
Intertemporal Altruism
By: Felix Chopra, Armin Falk and Thomas Graeber
Most prosocial decisions involve intertemporal tradeoffs. Yet, the timing of prosocial utility flows is ambiguous and bypassed by most models of other-regarding preferences. We study the behavioral implications of the time structure of prosocial utility,...
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- Article
Common Variants of the Oxytocin Receptor Gene Do Not Predict the Positive Mood Benefits of Prosocial Spending
By: Ashley V. Whillans, Lara B. Aknin, Colin Ross, Lihan Chen and Frances S. Chen
Who benefits most from helping others? Previous research suggests that common polymorphisms of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) predict whether people behave generously and experience increases in positive mood in response to socially-focused experiences in daily...
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- August 2020
- Article
Does Spending Money on Others Promote Happiness? A Registered Replication Report
By: Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Jason Proulx, Iris Lok and Michael I. Norton
Research indicates that spending money on others—prosocial spending—leads to greater happiness than spending money on oneself (e.g., Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008, 2014). These findings have received widespread attention because they offer insight into why people engage...
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- Article
Forgoing Earned Incentives to Signal Pure Motives
By: Erika L. Kirgios, Edward H. Chang, Emma E. Levine, Katherine L. Milkman and Judd B. Kessler
Policy makers, employers, and insurers often provide financial incentives to encourage citizens, employees, and customers to take actions that are good for them or for society (e.g., energy conservation, healthy living, safe driving). Although financial incentives are...
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- March 24, 2020
- Article
Delayed Negative Effects of Prosocial Spending on Happiness
By: Armin Falk and Thomas Graeber
Does prosocial behavior promote happiness? We test this longstanding hypothesis in a behavioral experiment that extends the scope of previous research. In our Saving a Life paradigm, every participant either saved one human life in expectation by triggering a targeted...
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- February 2020
- Article
Being 'Good' or 'Good Enough': Prosocial Risk and the Structure of Moral Self-regard
By: Julian Zlatev, Daniella M. Kupor, Kristin Laurin and Dale T. Miller
The motivation to feel moral powerfully guides people’s prosocial behavior. We propose that people’s efforts to preserve their moral self-regard conform to a moral threshold model. This model predicts that people are primarily concerned with whether their...
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- February 2020
- Article
Why Prosocial Referral Incentives Work: The Interplay of Reputational Benefits and Action Costs
By: Rachel Gershon, Cynthia Cryder and Leslie K. John
While selfish incentives typically outperform prosocial incentives, in the context of customer referral rewards, prosocial incentives can be more effective. Companies frequently offer “selfish” (i.e., sender-benefiting) referral incentives, offering customers financial...
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- Article
Signaling When Nobody Is Watching: A Reputation Heuristics Account of Outrage and Punishment in One-shot Anonymous Interactions
By: Jillian J. Jordan and David G. Rand
Moralistic punishment can confer reputation benefits by signaling trustworthiness to observers. However, why do people punish even when nobody is watching? We argue that people often rely on the heuristic that reputation is typically at stake, such that reputation...
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Keywords:
Signaling;
Morality;
Trustworthiness;
Anger;
Third-party Punishment;
Moral Sensibility;
Behavior;
Trust;
Reputation
- 2019
- Chapter
Happiness and Prosocial Behavior: An Evaluation of the Evidence
By: Lara B. Aknin, Ashley V. Whillans, Michael I. Norton and Elizabeth W. Dunn
Humans are an extremely prosocial species. Compared to most primates, humans provide more assistance to family, friends, and strangers, even when costly. Why do people devote their resources to helping others? In this chapter, we examine whether engaging in prosocial...
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- November 2018
- Article
Global Evidence on Economic Preferences
By: Armin Falk, Anke Becker, Thomas Dohmen, Benjamin Enke, David Huffman and Uwe Sunde
This article studies the global variation in economic preferences. For this purpose, we present the Global Preference Survey (GPS), an experimentally validated survey data set of time preference, risk preference, positive and negative reciprocity, altruism, and trust...
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