Abstract
Are humans instinctively good or is it only our capacity for reflection that enables us to restrain our selfish traits and behave prosocially? Against the background of dual-process theory, the question of whether people tend to behave prosocially on intuitive grounds has been debated controversially for several years. Central to this debate is the so-called social heuristic hypothesis (SHH), which states that subjects orient their behavior more closely to their deeply ingrained norms and attitudes when the behavior comes about in an intuitive rather than reflective manner. In this paper, we apply the SHH to a novel setting and investigate whether its implications hold true in a non-reactive field experiment, in which subjects are unaware that they are part of a study. We test whether subjects report a misdirected email or try to use the opportunity to reap a monetary benefit. Since all subjects participated six months prior to the field experiment in a lab experiment, we have solid measures of the subjects’ general tendency to behave intuitively and their prosocial attitudes. In addition, participants were asked in a follow-up survey to self-report their intuitiveness at the time of the decision. While we observe a significant and positive effect on prosocial behavior for self-reported intuitiveness (but not for general intuitiveness) in the bivariate analyses, this effect becomes insignificant when controlling for interaction effects with attitudes. In addition, for both forms of intuitiveness, we find a significant and positive interaction effect with subjects’ prosocial attitudes on prosocial behavior. Hence, this study confirms previous findings from laboratory as well as online studies and provides external validity by demonstrating that the SHH applies in a real-life situation.
Highlights
In many everyday situations as well as in many experimental studies, it has been observed time and again that a substantial proportion of people are willing to act prosocially, i.e., to forgo short-term benefits or incur some personal costs in order to improve the well-being of others [1,2,3]
We report results of a non-reactive field experiment to contribute to the discussion regarding the social heuristic hypothesis (SHH) [13]
A notable feature of the current study is that the participants of the field experiment had previously participated in a lab experiment which is why we have solid measures of participants’ prosocial attitudes as well as their general intuitiveness at our disposal
Summary
In many everyday situations as well as in many experimental studies, it has been observed time and again that a substantial proportion of people are willing to act prosocially, i.e., to forgo short-term benefits or incur some personal costs in order to improve the well-being of others [1,2,3]. These findings pose explanatory challenges in situations where mechanisms such as reputation or reciprocity cannot contribute to the emergence of prosocial behavior, i.e., interactions that are anonymous and one-time. While the exact interplay between these two kinds of processes is still a matter of debate [6, 7], DPT has given rise to influential applications in research on prosocial behavior
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
