Generous Choices Research Articles

Generous, egalitarian, and competitive social values: An intercultural, intracommunity analysis of preschoolers

Social values orientation (SVO) refers to stable individual differences in the allocation of resources between self and others. In the present study, an intracommunity sample of preschool-age children was administered two economic dictator games, one pitting cooperation against selfishness and the other generosity against egalitarianism. A third game assessed competitiveness against cooperation. Results revealed that Spanish-speaking Latinx children (collectivistic family background) were more likely to make both cooperative choices and generous choices than a combined subsample of English-speaking Latinx, African American and Caucasian children (non-collectivistic background). These findings suggest that generosity rather than egalitarianism underlies the cooperative tendency of children from collectivist backgrounds. As expected, English-speaking Latinx children (mixed background) were highest on competitiveness. Contrary to predictions, neither cultural background, social values, nor their interaction were associated with teacher-rated child behavioral adjustment. Findings support SVO validity for the intracommunity sample but not its usefulness for predicting behavioral adjustment of preschool students.

Arbitration between insula and temporoparietal junction subserves framing-induced boosts in generosity during social discounting

Generosity toward others declines across the perceived social distance to them. Here, participants chose between selfish and costly generous options in two conditions: in the gain frame, a generous choice yielded a gain to the other; in the loss frame, it entailed preventing the loss of a previous endowment to the other. Social discounting was reduced in the loss compared to the gain frame, implying increased generosity toward strangers. Using neuroimaging tools, we found that while activity in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) was associated with generosity in the gain frame, the insular cortex was selectively recruited during generous choices in the loss frame. We provide support for a network-model according to which TPJ and insula differentially subserve generosity by modulating value signals in the VMPFC in a frame-dependent fashion. These results extend our understanding of the insula role in nudging prosocial behavior in humans.

Testosterone reduces generosity through cortical and subcortical mechanisms

Recent evidence has linked testosterone, a major sex hormone, to selfishness in economic decision-making. Here, we aimed to investigate the neural mechanisms through which testosterone reduces generosity by combining functional MRI with pharmacological manipulation among healthy young males in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-subject design. After testosterone or placebo gel administration, participants performed a social discounting task in which they chose between selfish options (benefiting only the participant) and generous options (providing also some benefit to another person at a particular social distance). At the behavioral level, testosterone reduced generosity compared to the placebo. At the neural level (n = 60), the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) encoded the other-regarding value of the generous option during generous choices, and this effect was attenuated by testosterone, suggesting that testosterone reduced the consideration of other's welfare as underpinned by TPJ activity. Moreover, TPJ activity more strongly reflected individual differences in generosity in the placebo than the testosterone group. Furthermore, testosterone weakened the relation between the other-regarding value of generous decisions and connectivity between the TPJ and a region extending from the insula into the striatum. Together, these findings suggest that a network encompassing both cortical and subcortical components underpins the effects of testosterone on social preferences.

Acute stress counteracts framing-induced generosity boosts in social discounting in young healthy men

Most individuals are willing to forego resources for the benefit of others, but their willingness to do so typically declines as a function of social distance between the donor and recipient, a phenomenon termed social discounting. We recently showed that participants were more altruistic towards strangers when a costly generous choice was framed as preventing a monetary loss to the other rather than granting them a gain. Here, we asked if acute stress would diminish this frame effect on social discounting. To test this hypothesis, 102 male participants engaged in either the Maastricht Acute Stress Task, or a matched, non-stressful control procedure. They subsequently played a two-frame dictator game version of the social discounting paradigm. Whereas both frame conditions were economically equivalent, in the give frame, participants were asked how much money they would share with other persons on variable social distance levels, and in the take frame, they decided on how much money to take away from the others. While non-stressed control participants showed increased generosity toward strangers in the take compared to the give frame, similar to previous findings of our group, stress attenuated this frame effect on social discounting by reducing generosity toward strangers in the take frame. These findings confirm that stress can corrupt prosocial motives and social norm compliance, diminishing prosocial tendencies toward unfamiliar others.

Attentional priorities drive effects of time pressure on altruistic choice

Dual-process models of altruistic choice assume that automatic responses give way to deliberation over time, and are a popular way to conceptualize how people make generous choices and why those choices might change under time pressure. However, these models have led to conflicting interpretations of behaviour and underlying psychological dynamics. Here, we propose that flexible, goal-directed deployment of attention towards information priorities provides a more parsimonious account of altruistic choice dynamics. We demonstrate that time pressure tends to produce early gaze-biases towards a person’s own outcomes, and that individual differences in this bias explain how individuals’ generosity changes under time pressure. Our gaze-informed drift-diffusion model incorporating moment-to-moment eye-gaze further reveals that underlying social preferences both drive attention, and interact with it to shape generosity under time pressure. These findings help explain existing inconsistencies in the field by emphasizing the role of dynamic attention-allocation during altruistic choice.

On the Provision of Unemployment Insurance when Workers are Ex-Ante Heterogeneous

Abstract Labor market outcomes demonstrate considerable variation between and within skill groups. We construct a general equilibrium model with incomplete markets and exogenous differences that matches these facts. We study the role of exogenous heterogeneity in choosing the optimal replacement rate and the maximum benefit for an unemployment insurance (UI) system. The optimal average replacement rate is 27%, compared to 0% in a model without exogenous heterogeneity. The relatively generous choice is due to the redistributive role of UI, which is a manifestation of two elements. First, workers who are unemployed more often receive positive net transfers from the UI system because they draw resources more frequently. Second, the existence of a cap on benefits makes UI progressive. Our main result holds in the presence of a generous progressive taxation system.

Acute stress and altruism in younger and older adults

Recent studies of aging and decision making suggests that altruism increases with age. It is unclear, however, whether this pattern holds when choices are made under stress, as is often the case in real-world scenarios. The current study used an intertemporal choice task in which younger and older adults received a financial endowment before making a series of consequential intertemporal decisions involving gains, losses and charitable donations. Preceding the choice task, participants were exposed to a laboratory stressor. Physiological stress reactivity was a predictor of altruistic decision making in younger adults, such that individuals with higher stress reactivity made more generous choices. Older adults showed higher altruism than younger adults overall, with altruism unrelated to stress reactivity in older adults. These findings are consistent with an age-related change in the mechanisms underlying altruistic behavior.

A neural link between generosity and happiness

Generous behaviour is known to increase happiness, which could thereby motivate generosity. In this study, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging and a public pledge for future generosity to investigate the brain mechanisms that link generous behaviour with increases in happiness. Participants promised to spend money over the next 4 weeks either on others (experimental group) or on themselves (control group). Here, we report that, compared to controls, participants in the experimental group make more generous choices in an independent decision-making task and show stronger increases in self-reported happiness. Generous decisions engage the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) in the experimental more than in the control group and differentially modulate the connectivity between TPJ and ventral striatum. Importantly, striatal activity during generous decisions is directly related to changes in happiness. These results demonstrate that top–down control of striatal activity plays a fundamental role in linking commitment-induced generosity with happiness.

Moderating Effects of Social Value Orientation on the Effect of Social Influence in Prosocial Decisions.

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.

A Neurocomputational Model of Altruistic Choice and Its Implications

We propose a neurocomputational model of altruistic choice and test it using behavioral and fMRI data from a task in which subjects make choices between real monetary prizes for themselves and another. We show that a multi-attribute drift-diffusion model, in which choice results from accumulation of a relative value signal that linearly weights payoffs for self and other, captures key patterns of choice, reaction time, and neural response in ventral striatum, temporoparietal junction, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. The model generates several novel insights into the nature of altruism. It explains when and why generous choices are slower or faster than selfish choices, and why they produce greater response in TPJ and vmPFC, without invoking competition between automatic and deliberative processes or reward value for generosity. It also predicts that when one's own payoffs are valued more than others', some generous acts may reflect mistakes rather than genuinely pro-social preferences.

Social discounting involves modulation of neural value signals by temporoparietal junction

Most people are generous, but not toward everyone alike: generosity usually declines with social distance between individuals, a phenomenon called social discounting. Despite the pervasiveness of social discounting, social distance between actors has been surprisingly neglected in economic theory and neuroscientific research. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the neural basis of this process to understand the neural underpinnings of social decision making. Participants chose between selfish and generous alternatives, yielding either a large reward for the participant alone, or smaller rewards for the participant and another individual at a particular social distance. We found that generous choices engaged the temporoparietal junction (TPJ). In particular, the TPJ activity was scaled to the social-distance-dependent conflict between selfish and generous motives during prosocial choice, consistent with ideas that the TPJ promotes generosity by facilitating overcoming egoism bias. Based on functional coupling data, we propose and provide evidence for a biologically plausible neural model according to which the TPJ supports social discounting by modulating basic neural value signals in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex to incorporate social-distance-dependent other-regarding preferences into an otherwise exclusively own-reward value representation.

Natural and strategic generosity as signals of trustworthiness.

We exploit the fact that generosity and trustworthiness are highly correlated and the former can thus be a sign of the latter. Subjects decide between a generous and a mean split in a dictator game. Some of them are informed from the start that afterwards they will participate in a trust game and that their choice in the dictator game may matter; others are not informed in advance. In the trust game, before trusters decide whether or not to trust, some trustees can reveal (or conceal) only their true choice in the dictator game, while others can say to trusters, truthfully or otherwise, what they chose. We find that a generous choice made naturally by uninformed trustees and reliably revealed is more effective in persuading trusters to trust than a generous choice that could be strategic or a lie. Moreover, we find that, when they can, mean subjects lie and go on to be untrustworthy.

A randomized controlled trial of the effects of muscle stretching, manual therapy and steroid injections in addition to ‘stay active’ care on health-related quality of life in acute or subacute low back pain

Objective: To evaluate the health-related quality of life effects of muscle stretching, manual therapy and steroid injections in addition to ‘stay active’ care in acute or subacute low back pain patients. Study design: A randomized, controlled trial during 10 weeks with four treatment groups. Setting: Nine primary health care and one outpatient orthopaedic hospital department. Subjects: One hundred and sixty patients with acute or subacute low back pain. Interventions: Ten weeks of ‘stay active’ care only (group 1), or ‘stay active’ and muscle stretching (group 2), or ‘stay active’, muscle stretching and manual therapy (group 3), or ‘stay active’, muscle stretching, manual therapy and steroid injections (group 4). Main measures: The Gothenburg Quality of Life instrument subscales Well-being score and Complaint score. Results: In a multivariate analysis adjusted for possible outcome affecting variables other than the treatment given Well-being score was 68.4 (12.5), 72.1 (12.4), 72,3 (12.4) and 72.7 (12.5) in groups 1–4, respectively (P for trend <0.05). There were significant trends for the well-being components patience (P < 0.005), energy (P < 0.05), mood (P < 0.05) and family situation (P < 0.05). The remaining two components and Complaint score showed a non-significant trend towards improvement. Conclusion: The effects on health-related quality of life were greater the larger the number of treatment modalities available. The ‘stay active’ treatment group, with the most restricted number of modalities, had the most modest health-related quality of life improvement, while group 4 with the most generous choice of treatment modalities, had the greatest improvement.