Abstract
Prosocial behaviors are susceptible to individuals’ preferences regarding payoffs and social context. In the present study, we combined individual differences with social influence and attempted to discover the effect of social value orientation (SVO) and social influence on prosocial behavior in a trust game and a dictator game. Prosocial behavior in the trust game could be motivated by strategic considerations whereas individuals’ decisions in the dictator game could be associated with their social preference. In the trust game, prosocials were less likely than proselfs to conform to the behavior of other group members when the majority of group members distrusted the trustee. In the dictator game, the results of the three-way ANOVA indicated that, irrespective of the type of offer, in contrast to proselfs, prosocials were influenced more by others’ generous choices than their selfish choices, even if the selfish choices were beneficial to themselves. The overall results demonstrated that the effect of social influence appears to depend on individuals’ SVO: that is, prosocials tend to conform to prosocial rather than proself behaviors.
Highlights
People often face mixed-motive social dilemmas in which their self-interest is at variance with what is best for their community (Balliet et al, 2009)
In Study 1, we investigated the interaction between Social value orientation (SVO) and social influence in trusting behavior using the trust game
We developed a variant of the trust game in which participants, who were able to see other group members’ choices before making a decision, were asked to decide whether to send the endowment to a stranger or to keep the endowment
Summary
People often face mixed-motive social dilemmas in which their self-interest is at variance with what is best for their community (Balliet et al, 2009). Previous studies have shown that people differ in fundamental ways in how they approach and interact in social dilemmas (Van Lange et al, 2013a,b). Researchers have noted that three SVOs are common (Messick and McClintock, 1968): individuals can be classified as prosocials, individualists, and competitors. Competitors attempt to maximize the difference between their own welfare and others’ outcomes (Messick and McClintock, 1968; Kuhlman and Marshello, 1975; Van Lange, 1999). Because competitors show non-cooperative behavior similar to individualists’ and the proportion of competitors is quite small, Social Influence in Prosocial Decisions previous studies have combined individualists and competitors into a category called “proselfs” (Van Lange and Liebrand, 1991; Van Lange et al, 1998; Bogaert et al, 2008)
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