After last Monday’s post on childrens behavior in dictator games, I wanted to follow up on how experimenters prime subjects to be more prosocial in economic experiments
For example, researchers can increase the prosociality of experiment participants by inducing different mood states; unsurprisingly, people who are in a better mood tend to give more in dictator game type settings than people who are in a bad mood (this might have something to do with it). It also seems possible to prime altruistic behavior by presenting visual cues of prosociality, as was done in another experiment I wrote an article about a while back.
Indeed, I am certain that there exist quite a few more ways of priming for prosociallity, but the following two are my absolute favorites:
For example, researchers can increase the prosociality of experiment participants by inducing different mood states; unsurprisingly, people who are in a better mood tend to give more in dictator game type settings than people who are in a bad mood (this might have something to do with it). It also seems possible to prime altruistic behavior by presenting visual cues of prosociality, as was done in another experiment I wrote an article about a while back.
Indeed, I am certain that there exist quite a few more ways of priming for prosociallity, but the following two are my absolute favorites:
- Invoking a fear of God, and
- Invoking the Eye of Ra (or any other stylized depiction of an eye)
The experiments supporting these two methods are quite straightforward, and I’ll summarize here: In the first study, by Azim Shariff and Ara Norenzayan, participants were invited to play a single round of a classic dictator game, in which participants always played the role of the dictator. I.e. they were given complete decision authority on how to share $10 with their unknown subject in the dictator game (in this case the other player was actually a confederate of the experimenters). Before playing the game, participants worked on a scrambled-sentence task to prime either thoughts of God, thoughts of a civic institution, or some other neutral prime.
As a result of the priming, people who had been given a neutral prime gave on average $2.56, while those who had been given a prime invoking God, or who had been given a non-religious prosocial prime, gave more than 4$ on average.
Because a positive effect on prosociality seemed to follow both priming for God and priming for a non-religious civic institute, the effect is considered to depend more on the concept of “accountability” than on concepts of religiosity or faith. This becomes especially clear, when one considers that the experimental results showed no strong interaction between people’s religious attitudes (theists vs atheists) and their response to the God priming (atheists also behaved prosocially, when God was invoked).
Indeed, the argument for accountability as the mediating variable, becomes especially convincing when we consider a second set of experiments, conducted by Kevin Haley and Daniel Fessler.
Because a positive effect on prosociality seemed to follow both priming for God and priming for a non-religious civic institute, the effect is considered to depend more on the concept of “accountability” than on concepts of religiosity or faith. This becomes especially clear, when one considers that the experimental results showed no strong interaction between people’s religious attitudes (theists vs atheists) and their response to the God priming (atheists also behaved prosocially, when God was invoked).
Indeed, the argument for accountability as the mediating variable, becomes especially convincing when we consider a second set of experiments, conducted by Kevin Haley and Daniel Fessler.
In their experiments people also played the classic dictator game, but this time manipulation was as subtle as choosing different screen saver motives for the participants in the experiment. For one group the screen that showed up before the experiment started included a stylized depiction of a human eye as shown to the left. The other group saw a neutral background (a simple warehouse).The table below, shows the response to this manipulation in giving frequency. People who had seen the eye gave more than 85% of the time, while those who had seen a neutral scene gave around 55%. It appears as if brief exposure to the stylized image of a human eye was enough to induce some sense of “being watched” or possibly being made accountable; and this was enough to significantly alter giving behavior.
Looking at these types of studies (Ed Yong describes a nother amazing one at NERS here), I usually find myself in equal parts fascinated as well as terrified by the huge effects that seemingly small variation in the experimental set-up can have. Is it a rainy day, or sunny day when you run your experiment? Does the office smell nice today, or not? Was the lady who works at the entrance to the experimental lab nice to the incoming participants or not? I guess all you can do is pray for a random distribution of these type of noise terms, and make sure that you use the same screen saver and desktop background at all times.
Main References:
Shariff, A., & Norenzayan, A. (2007). God Is Watching You: Priming God Concepts Increases Prosocial Behavior in an Anonymous Economic Game Psychological Science, 18 (9), 803-809 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01983.x
HALEY, K., & FESSLER, D. (2005). Nobody's watching?Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game Evolution and Human Behavior, 26 (3), 245-256 DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.01.002
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