Abstract
Uncertainty is a fundamental feature of human life that can be fractioned into two distinct psychological constructs: risk (known probabilistic outcomes) and ambiguity (unknown probabilistic outcomes). Although risk and ambiguity are known to powerfully bias nonsocial decision-making, their influence on prosocial behavior remains largely unexplored. Here we show that ambiguity attitudes, but not risk attitudes, predict prosocial behavior: the greater an individual’s ambiguity tolerance, the more they engage in costly prosocial behaviors, both during decisions to cooperate (experiments 1 and 3) and choices to trust (experiment 2). Once the ambiguity associated with another’s actions is sufficiently resolved, this relationship between ambiguity tolerance and prosocial choice is eliminated (experiment 3). Taken together, these results provide converging evidence that attitudes toward ambiguity are a robust predictor of one’s willingness to engage in costly social behavior, which suggests a mechanism for the underlying motivations of prosocial action.
Highlights
IntroductionUncertainty is a fundamental feature of human life that can be fractioned into two distinct psychological constructs: risk (known probabilistic outcomes) and ambiguity (unknown probabilistic outcomes)
Uncertainty is a fundamental feature of human life that can be fractioned into two distinct psychological constructs: risk and ambiguity
Research illustrates that attitudes toward risk and ambiguity are separate psychological constructs with little overlap between the two[11,12]. It is well-documented that individuals are far more averse to ambiguous compared to risky uncertainty, consistently avoiding outcomes that are associated with unknown probabilistic outcomes[13,14,15]
Summary
Uncertainty is a fundamental feature of human life that can be fractioned into two distinct psychological constructs: risk (known probabilistic outcomes) and ambiguity (unknown probabilistic outcomes). Empirical research has failed to find a relationship between attitudes toward risk and prosocial behavior, such as decisions to trust[24,25] This may be because assessing whether an individual is trustworthy—or cooperative, generous, or kind—is more analogous to estimating unknown probabilistic outcomes, as it is rare to know with probabilistic certainty how another’s actions will unfold[26,27]. It becomes difficult to estimate another’s behavior when intentions and motives are hidden This inability to apply known probabilities to a set of outcomes further affects the actions an individual might subsequently take, rendering social exchanges rife with ambiguous uncertainty. One critical question that has received little attention is how ambiguity attitudes shape prosocial decision-making
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