Abstract
A key issue in cooperation research is to determine the conditions under which individuals invest in a public good. Here, we tested whether cues of being watched increase investments in an anonymous public good situation in real life. We examined whether individuals would invest more by removing experimentally placed garbage (paper and plastic bottles) from bus stop benches in Geneva in the presence of images of eyes compared to controls (images of flowers). We provided separate bins for each of both types of garbage to investigate whether individuals would deposit more items into the appropriate bin in the presence of eyes. The treatment had no effect on the likelihood that individuals present at the bus stop would remove garbage. However, those individuals that engaged in garbage clearing, and were thus likely affected by the treatment, invested more time to do so in the presence of eyes. Images of eyes had a direct effect on behaviour, rather than merely enhancing attention towards a symbolic sign requesting removal of garbage. These findings show that simple images of eyes can trigger reputational effects that significantly enhance on non-monetary investments in anonymous public goods under real life conditions. We discuss our results in the light of previous findings and suggest that human social behaviour may often be shaped by relatively simple and potentially unconscious mechanisms instead of very complex cognitive capacities.
Highlights
A central issue in evolutionary biology is to understand cooperative behaviour among unrelated and unfamiliar individuals [1,2,3,4,5]
To understand under which conditions individuals choose to invest in a public good is of theoretical interest, and of practical importance as some major problems humans face today, such as climate change, the financial crisis and over-exploitation of natural resources, result from a lack of cooperation in social dilemma situations [8,9]
If reputational effects cause an increase in investment in a public good, we predicted that cues of being watched enhance the likelihood and the amount of investment involved in removing garbage from a public location compared to controls
Summary
A central issue in evolutionary biology is to understand cooperative behaviour among unrelated and unfamiliar individuals [1,2,3,4,5]. Cues of being watched appeared to enhance the exchange of money for an open uncontrolled resource (milk, which was a proxy for tea and coffee) due to reputational effects Another more recent study showed that images of eyes decrease the likelihood that people would leave litter at their table in a University cafeteria [28]. If reputational effects cause an increase in investment in a public good, we predicted that cues of being watched (an image of eyes) enhance the likelihood and the amount of investment involved in removing garbage from a public location (a bus stop bench) compared to controls (an image with flowers). If images of eyes have a direct effect on behaviour that is not mediated by an increase in attention towards a sign requesting garbage removal, we predicted that the sign would not be noticed more often in the presence of eyes, compared to in the control
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