Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Setting The Scene: The Rise And Coalescence Of Heroism Science, Scott T. Allison, George R. Goethals, Roderick M. Kramer

Scott T. Allison

“Why Didn’T You Just Ask?” Underestimating The Discomfort Of Help-Seeking, Vanessa K. Bohns, Francis J. Flynn

Vanessa K. Bohns

Across four studies we demonstrate that people in a position to provide help tend to underestimate the role that embarrassment plays in decisions about whether or not to ask for help. As a result, potential helpers may overestimate the likelihood that people will ask for help (Studies 1 and 2). Further, helpers may be less inclined to allocate resources to underutilized support programs than help-seekers because they are less likely to attribute low levels of use to help-seekers’ concerns with embarrassment (Study 3). Finally, helpers may misjudge the most effective means of encouraging help-seeking behavior - emphasizing the practical benefits …

"Giving" In To Social Pressure, Alvaro J. Name-Correa, Huseyin Yildirim

Huseyin Yildirim

We develop a theory of charitable giving in which donors feel social pressure from adirect solicitation. We show that equilibrium donations are concentrated around a socialnorm. Despite a higher level of the public good, relatively poor and/or low altruism giversfare worse under social pressure and would avoid the solicitor at a cost. Aggregate donorwelfare improves to the extent that the added social motive alleviates the underprovision ofthe public good; however, overprovision may result. Our theory therefore predicts a lighthandedregulation for charitable solicitations, which is consistent with their exemption fromthe popular Do Not Call list in the U.S. We further show …

Let Me, Or Let George? Motives Of Competing Altruists, Ted Bergstrom, Rodney Garratt, Greg Leo

Ted C Bergstrom

Sometimes a costly action taken by a single individual is sufficient to benefit an entire group. This should imply technical economies of scale to groups of larger size. But in a group of selfishly motivated agents, a countervailing force, the free-rider problem, may actually reduce the likelihood of provision as group size increases. Yet there are con- spicuous real-world cases where, in seeming defiance of the free-rider problem, a small minority provides a public good that benefits a large population. Examples include unpaid contributions to Wikipedia, Linux, and the bone-marrow registry. We suggest that these successful outcomes occur because a …

On The Proper Motives Of Corporate Directors (Or, Why You Don't Want To Invite Homo Economicus To Join Your Board), Lynn A. Stout

Lynn A. Stout

One of the most important questions in corporate governance is how directors of public corporations can be motivated to serve the interests of the firm. Directors frequently hold only small stakes in the companies they manage. Moreover, a variety of legal rules and contractual arrangements insulate them from liability for business failures. Why then should we expect them to do a good job? Conventional corporate scholarship has great difficulty wrestling with this question, in large part because conventional scholarship usually adopts the economist's assumption that directors are rational actors motivated purely by self-interest. This homo economicus model of behavior may …

Doing Wrong To Do Right? Social Preferences And Dishonest Behavior, Edward Okeke, Susan Godlonton

Edward Okeke

Can pro-social preferences lead to dishonest or unethical behavior? Lab evidence suggests that it can. In this paper, we document some of the first field evidence of this phenomenon. In this study, individuals were hired as field staff and tasked with distributing subsidized price vouchers following a clearly specified protocol. We find substantial deviation from the protocol, i.e., cheating. We study the mis-allocation of the vouchers to gain some insight into motivations for dishonesty. In our main result we find that the field staff were significantly more likely to allocate the higher value vouchers (those representing a greater subsidy) to …

Cuando El Altruismo Hace Daño, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

The article reviews Barbara Oakley's concept of Pathological Altruism and analyzes its implications in moral and social contexts.

Optimal Income Taxation With Social Preferences, Brandon Lehr

Brandon Lehr

This paper characterizes optimal nonlinear income taxation of individuals who exhibit social preferences. If individuals exhibit equity concerns, above and beyond the government's social welfare criterion, how is the shape of the marginal tax schedule impacted? In particular, I consider individuals who are concerned not only with their own consumption and labor supply, but also care positively or negatively about some aggregate consumption reference point. In addition, I allow for individuals to differ with respect to their attitudes towards this reference point. This framework flexibly allows for the specification of preferences that may be concerned with baseline altruism, inequality aversion, …

Motivations Of Competing Altruists, Ted C. Bergstrom, Rodney Garratt, Gregory Leo

Ted C Bergstrom

This is a preliminary report on our experimental work with competing altruists.

Single-Payer Volunteers' Dilemma, Ted C. Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

The "Volunteers' Dilemma model which was introduced by Andreas Diekmann is a game theoretic model of diffusion of responsibility where only one person is needed to perform a publicly beneficial act, but many people could do it. Players do not know what the others have done. In the symmetric mixed strategy Nash equilibrium for this game, the probability that nobody takes action increases as the number of players increases. This paper shows that the same result holds even when volunteers are taken anonymously but only one person is selected to perform the action/

The Good Samaritan And Traffic On The Road To Jericho, Ted C. Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

Environmental Volunteers: Are They Driven By Altruism And A Strong Feeling Of Regional Identity?, Melanie J. Randle, Sara Dolnicar

Melanie Randle

The significant growth of the nonprofit sector in Australia has lead to increased competition between organisations in attracting and retaining volunteers. Nonprofit managers are under increasing pressure to adopt commercial marketing techniques in order to achieve volunteer targets, and are recognising the need for detailed market information in order to develop customised and targeted marketing strategies. Environmental organisations within Australia lack information in relation to the particular segment of the market which is most likely to volunteer for their type of cause. This study addresses this issue by investigating whether environmental volunteers display unique characteristics, such as strong levels of …

Is Altruism Bad For Cooperation?, Sung-Ha Hwang, Samuel Bowles

Samuel Bowles

Some philosophers and social scientists have stressed the importance for good government of an altruistic citizenry that values the well being of one another. Others have emphasized the need for incentives that induce even the self interested to contribute to the public good. Implicitly most have assumed that these two approaches are complementary or at worst additive. But this need not be the case. Behavioral experiments find that if reciprocity-minded subjects feel hostility towards free riders and enjoy inflicting harm on them, near efficient levels of contributions to a public good may be supported when group members have opportunities to …

Conspicuous Conservation And Private Provision Of Public Goods, Steven E. Sexton, Alison Sexton

Steven E. Sexton

No abstract provided.

Conspicuous Conservation: The Prius Effect And Willingness To Pay For Environmental Bona Fides, Steven E. Sexton

Steven E. Sexton

The notion that individuals seek status among their peers predates economics. A considerable literature has relied on status-seeking motives to explain anomalies in consumption behavior, such as upward sloping demand curves and persistent demand for luxury brand items that provide the same functionality as cheaper alternatives. As social norms change, so may the social response to signals. In particular, there is anecdotal evidence that amid growing concern about climate change and environmental degradation, costly signals of austerity may afford the status once reserved for those who displayed ostentation. In this paper, we develop a theory of conspicuous conservation and test …

Paying For Pollution? How General Equilibrium Effects Undermine The 'Spare The Air' Program, Steven E. Sexton

Steven E. Sexton

Policy-makers have relied on non-coercive mechanisms to achieve socially optimal outcomes in a variety of contexts when prices fail to ration scarce resources. Amid heightened concern about environmental damage and climate change, public appeals for cooperation and pecuniary incentives are frequently used to achieve resource conservation and other prosocial behavior. Yet the relative effectiveness of these two instruments is poorly understood when pecuniary incentives are small. This paper examines the extent to which free transit fares and appeals for car trip avoidance reduce car pollution on smoggy days. Using data on freeway traffic volumes and transit ridership, public appeals for …

One Chance In A Million: Altruism And The Bone Marrow Registry, Ted Bergstrom, Rod Garratt, Damien Sheehan-Connor

Ted C Bergstrom

Transplants of donated stem cells save the lives of many patients with blood diseases. Donation is somewhat painful, butrarely has lasting adverse effects. Patients can accept transplants only from donors with compatible immune systems. Those lacking a sibling match must seek donations from the population at large. The probability that two persons of the same race are compatible is less than 1/10,000. Health authorities maintain a registry of several million genetically-tested potential donors who have agreed to donate if asked. We study the peculiar structure of voluntary public good provision represented by the registry, and compare the marginal benefits and …

A Note On The Design Of Experiments Involving Public Goods, Philip E. Graves

PHILIP E GRAVES

Concern about potential free riding in the provision of public goods has a long history. More recently, experimental economists have turned their attention to the conditions under which free riding would be expected to occur. A model of free riding is provided here which demonstrates that existing experimental approaches fail to explore a potentially important real-world dimension of free riding. In a cash-in-advance economy, free riding becomes a two-stage problem, while existing experiments only address the second stage. That is, one would expect households with high demands for public goods relative to private goods to generate less income than households …

Does Extensivity Form Part Of The Altruistic Personality? An Empirical Test Of Oliner And Oliners' Theory, Christopher J. Einolf

Christopher J Einolf

This paper tests Samuel and Pearl Oliner’s theory that extensivity is a cause of prosocial behaviors, using data from the 1995 and 2005 waves of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) survey. Principal components analysis of a set of nineteen questions about moral obligations supports the Oliners’ contention that some individuals have a constricted moral sense, meaning that they feel stronger obligations to help family members and friends than strangers, while others have an extensive moral sense and feel obligated to help both close and distant others. Tobit regression demonstrates that people with extensive moral obligations are more likely …

Attitude-Dependent Altruism, Turnout And Voting, Julio J. Rotemberg

Julio J Rotemberg

This paper presents a goal-oriented model of political participation based on two psychological assumptions. The first is that people are more altruistic towards individuals that agree with them and the second is that people's well-being rises when other people share their personal opinions. By conveying credible information on attitudes, voters give pleasure to individuals who agree with them and thereby confer vicarious utility on the voters themselves. Substantial equilibrium turnout emerges with nontrivial voting costs and modest altruism. The model can explain higher turnout in close elections as well as higher turnout by more informed and more educated individuals. It …

Natural Kantian Or Zoo Economicus? Evolutionary Theories Of Selfishness And Altruism Among Men And Beasts, Ted C. Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

This paper addresses the question of whether our evolutionary history suggests that humans are likely to be individually selected selfish maximizers or group selected altruists. It surveys models from the literature of evolutionary biology in which groups are formed and dissolved and where the reproductive success of individuals is determined by their payoffs in a game played within groups. We show that if groups are formed randomly and reproductive success of group founders is determined by a multi-person prisoners’ dilemma game, then selfish behavior will prevail over maximization of group payoffs. However, interesting models can be found for which “group …

Benefit-Cost In A Benevolent Society, Ted Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

How should benefit-cost analysis account for the value that benevolent individuals place on other people's pleasure from public goods? When adding up the benefits to be compared with costs, should we sum the private valuations, the altruistic valuations, or something else? This paper proposes a partial answer and offers some suggestions for benefit-cost practitioners.

Hiv Testing: A Trojan Horse?, Stéphane Mechoulan

Stéphane Mechoulan

The consequences of HIV testing are unclear. Some infected individuals, assuming they behave selfishly, would tend to increase their number of partners. Meanwhile, non-infected ones or those ignorant of their status would decrease theirs, the result of which, on the equilibrium level of infection, is uncertain. Simulations from a simple dynamic model show how to generate the Philipson-Posner conjecture, i.e., that disclosure of HIV status may result in higher disease prevalence. In this benchmark case, testing would also lower welfare. Those results, however, appear to be fragile. In particular, very little altruism seems needed for testing to become beneficial, and …

The Iron Law Of Selfishness: Response To A Comment By Alexander Field, Ted Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

Alexander Field was not convinced of a result that I claimed in my JEP 2001 paper that in "haystack models" with non-assortative mating, if the number of descendants of founding group members is determined by an n-player prisoners' dilemma game, then the population will converge to a population of defectors. He thought that the result applied only if the groups were large. I respond with a more detailed discussion and show how the result works even when groups have only two members.

Evolution Of Social Behavior: Individual And Group Selection, Ted Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

How selfish does our evolutionary history suggest that humans will be? We explore models in which groups are formed and dissolved and where reproduction of individuals is determined by their payoffs in a game played within groups. If groups are formed ``randomly'' and reproductive success of group founders is determined by a multi-person prisoners' dilemma game, then selfish behavior will prevail over maximization of group payoffs. However, interesting models exist in which ``group selection'' sustains cooperative behavior. Forces that support cooperative behavior include assortative matching in groups, group longevity, and punishment-based group norms.

Does Mother Nature Punish Rotten Kids?, Ted Bergstrom, Carl Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

The theory of parent-offspring conflict predicts that mothers and their offspring may not agree about how resources should be allocated among family members. A kid, for example, may favor a later weaning date than does its mother. Despite the mother's physical superiority, it may be that the kid is able to manipulate her behavior. In this paper, we investigate a two-locus population genetic model of weaning conflict in which offspring can attempt to extort resources from their parents by reducing their own chances of survival if their demands are not met. We find that the frequency of recombination between the …

On The Evolution Of Altruistic Ethical Rules For Siblings, Ted Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

This paper explores the evolutionary foundations of altruism among siblings and extends biologists' kin-selection theory to a richer class of games between relatives. It shows that a population will resist invasion by dominant mutant genes if individuals maximize a "semi-Kantian" utility function in games with their siblings. It is shown that a population that resists invasion by dominant mutants may be invaded by recessive mutants. Conditions are found under which a population resists invasion by dominant and also by recessive mutants. (JEL C70, D10, D63)

How Altruism Can Prevail In An Evolutionary Environment, Ted Bergstrom, Oded Stark

Ted C Bergstrom

This paper considers a series of examples in which evolution supports cooperative behavior in single-shot prisoners' dilemma. Examples include genetic inheritance for asexual siblings and for sexual diploid siblings. We also study two models of ``cultural inheritance''; one in which siblings copy either their parents or an extrafamilial role model and one in which neighbors arrayed along a circular road copy successful neighbors. Finally, we consider a model in which parents choose their behavior, realizing that it may be imitated by their children. A unifying principle of these models is that cooperative behavior more is likely to be sustained in …