Proself Orientations Research Articles

Younger adults are more prosocial than older adults in economic decision making results from the give and take game

The present study was designed to investigate the disadvantageous and advantageous inequity aversion of young and older adults in situations which allowed them to maximize or minimize payoff inequalities. Given the very limited evidence regarding an actual age-related effect on inequity aversion, the purpose of this study was to examine this question using an economic game, “the Give-and-Take Game”, which is able to circumvent certain limitations of the Ultimatum Game, to evaluate inequity aversion (i.e., a same behaviour which can be induced by opposite motivations: prosocial vs. pro-self vs. altruistic orientations). In the “Give-and-Take Game”, a sum of money was randomly distributed between the participant and a dummy player. These distributions created monetary inequalities, advantageous either for the participant (to examine advantageous inequity aversion) or for the other player (to examine disadvantageous inequity aversion). Different response options were proposed to the participants to either maximize or minimize payoff inequalities between the players. This procedure not only allowed to differentiate individual’s profiles with more prosocial vs. pro-self vs. altruistic orientations, but also to examine age-related effects on these profiles. The results showed that older adults showed a more important pro-self orientation compared to their younger counterparts. They more frequently selected the options which maximized their own payoffs and were less averse to advantageous inequity compared to young adults. In contrast, young adults showed a similar level of advantageous and disadvantageous inequity aversion. Older adults focused on the economic and competitive dimension of the game, which may have motivated them to maximize their own payoffs. Conversely, young adults took into account the social dimension of the game, focusing on a fair monetary distribution.

Motivating the Motivationally Diverse Crowd: Social Value Orientation and Reward Structure in Crowd Idea Generation

ABSTRACT Some people contribute ideas for prosocial reasons in crowdsourcing; others do so for selfish reasons. Extending the theory of motivated information processing, the research posits that prosocial and proself individuals respond differently to reward structures in crowd idea generation. Two online experiments measured participants’ prosocial versus proself orientation and manipulated whether participants received a competitive or cooperative reward structure. Study 2 also manipulated whether participants viewed an original or a common peer idea. Proselfs produced more ideas when receiving competitive rewards; the idea generation of prosocials was not affected by the reward structure. This interaction effect was mediated by task effort and moderated the impact of peer ideas. Proselfs generated the most ideas when viewing an original peer idea and receiving competitive rewards; this effect was not observed for prosocials. The study contributes to crowdsourcing research by demonstrating that participants’ response to reward structures depends on their social value orientation. The implication is that crowdsourcing organizers should design tasks and rewards so they motivate participants with both prosocial and proself orientations.

An empirical analysis of the moderating effect of consumer skepticism between social value orientations and green advertising effectiveness

Purpose The purpose of this study is to add a reliable factor that can contribute theoretically and methodologically to explain prosocial and proself behaviors. The study also signifies that green advertising approaches enable the consumer to develop an intention for green purchases. The basic idea is to investigate consumer social orientations and align them with green advertising initiatives to elicit the desired response as green purchase to manifest environmentally conscious behavior. Design/methodology/approach The empirical analysis is based on data collection through questionnaires. Data is analyzed through structural equation modeling to assess the relationship of constructs. Findings The results of the study are empirically drawn through the measurement of relationships among consumer skepticism and the effectiveness of green advertising initiatives. Mediation of proself and prosocial orientation exists for public self-awareness but does not exist for benefit distance. Consumer skepticism moderates the relationship between prosocial orientation and green advertising effectiveness (GAE) but has no moderation between proself orientation and GAE. Originality/value The limitation of conventional prosocial theory does not explain the environmental behaviors driven by proself orientations. Hence, the addition of factors such as public awareness and social benefit distance coupled with signaling theory with foundations on theory of planned behavior and norm activation model to explain environmental conservation add an element of originality to the existing literature. Contribution to Impact The contribution of this study is the incorporation of social orientations as the antecedent for consumer behavior in an environmental context particularly as a response to green advertising initiatives to purchase green products. The use of theory of planned behavior in conjunction with the norm activation model and signaling theory adds to the literary bank.

Social value orientation modulates fairness processing during social decision-making: evidence from behavior and brain potentials.

Social value orientation (SVO) characterizes stable individual differences by an inherent sense of fairness in outcome allocations. Using the event-related potential (ERP), this study investigated differences in fairness decision-making behavior and neural bases between individuals with prosocial and proself orientations using the Ultimatum Game (UG). Behavioral results indicated that prosocials were more prone to rejecting unfair offers with stronger negative emotional reactions compared with proselfs. ERP results revealed that prosocials showed a larger P2 when receiving fair offers than unfair ones in a very early processing stage, whereas such effect was absent in proselfs. In later processing stages, although both groups were sensitive to fairness as reflected by an enhanced medial frontal negativity (MFN) for unfair offers and a larger P3 for fair offers, prosocials exhibited a stronger fairness effect on these ERP components relative to proselfs. Furthermore, the fairness effect on the MFN mediated the SVO effect on rejecting unfair offers. Findings regarding emotional experiences, behavioral patterns and ERPs provide compelling evidence that SVO modulates fairness processing in social decision-making, whereas differences in neural responses to unfair vs fair offers as evidenced by the MFN appear to play important roles in the SVO effect on behavioral responses to unfairness.

No more Mr. Nice Guy: social value orientation and abusive supervision

PurposeThe present research examined the interactive effect of subordinates' and their supervisors' social value orientations (SVO) on abusive supervision and its consequence for in-role performance.Design/methodology/approachIn study 1, we provided a survey to 420 subordinates and 115 supervisors from 42 organizations. HLM was used to test the hypothesized cross-level moderated mediation model. In study 2, 78 participants were asked to imagine they were a supervisor and responded to a potential scenario where supervisor and subordinate prosocial and proself orientations toward the organization were manipulated (2 × 2 design).FindingsStudy 1 showed that when supervisors have a higher prosocial motivation, subordinates who are more self-interested (proself) report more abuse than those with a higher prosocial motivation, with negative consequences for in-role performance. Study 2 replicated the pattern: participants (in the role as supervisor) with induced prosocial goals rated abusive supervision behaviors as more justified and acceptable toward a proself employee than they did toward a prosocial employee.Originality/valueThis research is innovative by bridging SVO and organizational literatures and demonstrating that a dyadic interaction between a proself subordinate and a prosocial supervisor may produce a reactive perpetrator – provocative victim relationship characterized by higher abusive supervision.

Interaction of the underdog with equality and scarcity

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating roles of equality and scarcity on the impact of underdog brand positioning on consumer purchase intentions. Beyond testing the relationship between underdog brand positioning and purchase intentions (Study 1), the study examines how the equality perception affects consumer choices on underdog brands (Study 2) and how the reasons for product scarcity influence purchase intentions of consumers with prosocial orientations (Study 3). Design/methodology/approach A research model is developed, depicting the impact of underdog brand positioning on purchase intentions via social value orientations and scarcity types. The conceptual model is validated using moderation process modeling and data for which are collected through sets of structured questionnaires analyzed through PROCESS modeling in SPSS. Findings The findings support that compared with top dog brand positioning, underdog brand positioning has a greater impact on consumers’ purchase intentions, and consumers with prosocial orientations generate greater purchase intentions than consumers with proself orientations. In addition, the demand-caused product scarcity also moderates the relationship between underdog brand biography and purchase intentions. Originality/value The study contributes to the ongoing research on brand positioning by examining the associations between equality perception and purchase intentions in the context of underdog brand biography. The study also shows the value of demand-caused scarcity as a moderator of the underdog brand–purchase intention linkage.

Encoding differences in posed negative emotional expressions between prosocials and proselfs

The purpose of this paper was to test whether people with proself orientation would be less accurate in the encoding of negative facial expressions than people with prosocial orientation when they intentionally make facial expressions. Six universal facial expressions, which were anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, of 72 participants were photographed. Then, the accuracy of expressing action units (AUs), which are compositions of facial expressions, was measured using an automatic facial expression decoding program. Afterwards, the mean differences in the values of AUs and their combinations of each facial expression between prosocials and proselfs were examined. First, according to the correlation analysis of self-reported measures proself orientation was positively related to amoral manipulation and vulnerable type of narcissism, and negatively related to mental health and emotional competence. Second, compared to prosocials, proselfs expressed less accurately in upper lid raiser for both fear and surprise facial expressions when AUs at the baseline were not controlled. Third, the expression of inner brow raiser in fear facial expression was suppressed among proselfs when the baseline AU was controlled. However, there was no significant difference found in each combination of AUs. Partially supporting our hypothesis, these findings suggest that proselfs express negative emotions less accurately than prosocials, particularly showing suppressed AUs of fear facial expression. This result may reflect proselfs’ high exploitativeness and competitiveness as well as suppressed submissiveness, which serve to present themselves as dominant. Further implications of the results of the present study were discussed.

The interpersonal roots of politics: Social value orientation, socio-political attitudes and prejudice

The relationships between social value orientation, socio-political attitudes and prejudice was investigated in three studies (total N=1069). Participants filled in questionnaires containing measures of social value orientation, left–right political orientation, social worldviews (i.e. dangerous world and competitive jungle), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO) and prejudice towards immigrants. Study 1 showed that a proself orientation was associated to right-wing political orientation through the mediation of RWA and SDO. Study 2 revealed that social worldviews mediated the relationships of a proself orientation with RWA and SDO. Finally, Study 3 indicated that a proself orientation was related to prejudice through the intervention of social worldviews, RWA and SDO. Overall, these findings provided robust evidence about the elevant role of interpersonal orientation underpinning socio-political attitudes and prejudice.

Diplomacy after Policymaking: Theorizing Hyper-Empowered Individuals

Diplomatic Afterlives. Edited by Andrew F Cooper. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015. 206 pp., $24.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6199-5). The academic study of diplomacy in the discipline of International Relations (IR) has flourished in recent years (see Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann ⇓; Pouliot and Cornut ⇓ for recent volumes that include substantive reviews of the recent diplomacy renaissance). After decades of discounting diplomacy's importance in favor of structural explanations (Rathbun ⇓:1), diplomacy has (re)-emerged on the landscape of mainstream IR theorizing. One reason for this is the growing recognition that states spend so much time engaging in diplomacy, it must be for a good reason (if we assume that states take purposeful actions). More important is the growing sense that structural features beyond the control of individuals, such as power, do not account for the tremendous variation we see in political outcomes in the international system. In order to make sense of this variation, we need a theory of agency, an understanding of how individual agents can affect outcomes independent of other structural factors. Several works in the last few years have attempted to construct theories of diplomacy as theories of agency. Rathbun's (⇓) Diplomacy's Value: Creating Security in 1920s Europe and the Contemporary Middle East is an exemplar. Rathbun sets out discrete propositions about how diplomatic styles and diplomat characteristics, particularly prosocial vs. proself orientations, combine to help explain the Locarno period in Europe. Yarhi-Milo's (⇓) Knowing the Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence, and Assessment of Intentions in International Relations demonstrates that policymakers often make decisions about the intentions of states not just by looking at structural factors, but instead by relying on preexisting beliefs and …

Selected Determinants of Interpersonal Communication in Negotiation – between Openness and Manipulation

This theoretical and empirical article is dedicated to issues concerning communication in negotiation and the analysis of selected determinants. The authors have assumed that communication has two dimensions: one is based on open communication and the other on manipulative techniques. The research problem of the empirical study conducted by the authors was to establish what factors determine the use of these two dimensions of communication. Drawing on literature studies, they empirically examined such selected factors as social value orientation, experience and satisfaction with negotiation. This problem has been verified by an empirical study conducted in a group of 313 respondents. The main conclusions of the study refer to a correlation between the use of manipulation techniques in negotiation and a proself orientation, experience and the post-negotiation dissonance effect. In contrast, open communication is correlated with a prosocial orientation and a greater satisfaction with negotiation.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ss.88.2.12740

The bad apple effect and social value orientation in public-goods dilemmas: replication and extension of research findings.

Two studies were conducted to replicate and extend previous findings on the effect of uncooperative behavior on group cooperation (the "bad apple" effect). Study 1 (56 women, 40 men; M age = 23.5 yr.) manipulated information about contributions from the bad apple, controlling for overall contributions to a group account. Study 2 (50 women, 34 men; M age = 20.4 yr.) compared the effects of a bad apple and a good apple on cooperation. The social value orientation of participants was measured to explore individual differences in the bad apple effect. The results revealed a bad apple (a) decreased cooperation among individuals with proself and prosocial orientations in Study 1, and (b) had a greater effect than a good apple on those who were proself compared to prosocial in Study 2.

Feelings and motives underlying Machiavellian behavioural strategies; narrative reports in a social dilemma situation.

This study explored the reasons and motives underlying the decisions of individuals with strong Machiavellian attitudes (High Machs). One hundred and fifty undergraduate students completed the Mach-IV test, and their contributions to, financial success in and narrative reports of a public goods game were analysed. High Machs contributed less to the public good and gained more benefit than Low Machs. Analysis of the narrative reports showed that High Machs used significantly fewer verbs referring to emotional involvement and first person plural verb forms, than did Low Machs. This study confirmed previous findings that High Machs have a cool and rational character and a proself orientation and showed that their lack of group orientation may account for their low cooperation in social dilemmas. The results of narrative content analysis provide a new perspective on the motives and values behind High Machs' decisions and success in different fields of social life.

Individual Strategies of Managing Social Capital: A New Look at the Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships

The descriptive model of individual strategies of managing social capital of a person is presented. The individual strategy of managing social capital is based on personal values. This is a way how person interacts with his social surrounding. These strategies can have prosocial or proself orientation as well as intention on using or accumulation of the social capital. The combination of the vectors determines each of four individual strategies: rational altruism, mutual exchange, interpersonal pragmatism and resource monopolism. All of them are focused on the achievement of certain effects – desired states of social surrounding of a person.

Who syncs? Social motives and interpersonal coordination

Interpersonal synchrony provides an important foundation for social interaction, as periods of temporal coordination lead to enhanced sociality. Moreover, synchronous actions are governed by lawful physical principles of coordination dynamics, suggesting some degree of inevitability. However, both anecdotal and laboratory evidence indicates that not all individuals synchronize. Here we explored whether differences in social motives (i.e., social value orientation) influence the propensity to coordinate with others. The results revealed that individuals with a pro-social orientation spontaneously coordinated with a confederate to a greater extent than those with a pro-self orientation, regardless of whether such orientations were assessed as dispositional characteristics (Study 1) or were the result of a priming manipulation (Study 2). These findings have important implications for both coordination dynamics and prominent accounts of social exchange.

On the benign qualities of behavioral disinhibition: Because of the prosocial nature of people, behavioral disinhibition can weaken pleasure with getting more than you deserve.

This article focuses on social situations in which people are surprised about what is happening and inhibited about how to respond to the situation at hand. We study these situations by examining a classic topic in social psychology: how people respond to receiving better outcomes than are deserved. In these situations, the actions of an authority or a coworker push in the direction of accepting and enjoying the unfair outcome, whereas personal values for most people push in the direction of rejecting or being displeased with the outcome. This conflict may inhibit people's response to the advantageous but unfair outcomes. If people are indeed inhibited about how to respond to these kinds of outcomes, then lowering behavioral inhibition by reminding people of having acted in the past without inhibitions (in a manner that is unrelated to the outcomes participants subsequently receive) should affect reactions to the outcomes. Specifically, we hypothesize that because many people are prosocial and want to adhere to principles of fairness, reminders of behavioral disinhibition will lead to less pleasure with the unfairly obtained outcomes. The results of 8 experiments (conducted both inside and outside the psychology laboratory) revealed evidence for this benign disinhibition effect on various reactions to outcomes that are better than deserved. In further accordance with our line of reasoning, the effect is particularly pronounced among those who adhere to a prosocial orientation or who have adopted a prosocial mindset and is not observed among those with proself orientations or mindsets.

Social value orientation moderates ingroup love but not outgroup hate in competitive intergroup conflict

In intergroup conflict, individual cooperation may be directed at strengthening the ingroup, thus undermining the effectiveness and sustainability of the competing outgroup. Reversely, cooperation directed towards the competing outgroup indirectly undermines the viability of the ingroup and is often seen by ingroup members as disloyal, non-cooperative behavior. Using the Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma—Maximizing Differences Game to model intergroup conflict, the experiment reported here shows that compared to individuals with a chronic pro-self orientation, those with a chronic prosocial orientation display stronger ingroup trust and ingroup love—they self-sacrifice to benefit their ingroup—but not more or less outgroup distrust and outgroup hate. Furthermore, in this situation pro-social individuals were driven more by ingroup fairness considerations when contributing to their ingroup. Path analyses suggest that effects of social value orientation on ingroup love are mediated by ingroup trust and not by fairness considerations. Implications for research on social value orientations, and intergroup conflict and competition are discussed.

Does the Type of Anonymity Matter? The Impact of Visualization on Information Sharing in Online Groups

Groups who share information in computer-mediated settings often have to deal with the issue of anonymity. Previous research has shown that only people with a prosocial orientation--that is, those whose main interest is to add to the benefit of the group as a whole--are willing to share information in anonymous situations. The willingness to share information by those people with a proself orientation--that is, those who put more emphasis on their personal benefit--can be increased by providing photographs of the other group members. The information-sharing behavior of prosocials, however, suffers from such a deletion of anonymity. In an online experiment, we examined how information-sharing behavior of proselfs may be increased without negatively influencing the information-sharing behavior of prosocials in an online setting. It was shown that even proselfs share information if the group members are visualized in a homogeneous way, while prosocials' information-sharing behavior is not impaired by this visualization. In addition, the results suggest that people's perceived homogeneity of the online group, as well as the importance of the collective goal, are the underlying processes of this effect. These results have important practical implications for the design of online information-sharing settings.

When being disadvantaged grows into vengeance: The effects of asymmetry of interest and social rejection in social dilemmas

AbstractIn public good dilemmas, group members often differ in the extent to which they benefit from provision of the public good (asymmetry of interest). In the current paper, we argue that people may readily accept such financial differences in interest when their social needs are met by being accepted by the others. When people are socially rejected, however, members having a low rather than a high interest in the public good may display negative emotional and retributive reactions. This reasoning was supported by the findings of a first experimental study in which we manipulated people's interest in the public good and social rejection. These effects were replicated in a second experimental study and it was further shown that this two‐way interaction between social rejection and interest in the public good was moderated by people's social value orientation. The negative reactions to low interest (vs. high interest) in the public good when being socially rejected were especially prominent among group members with a proself orientation. Taken together, the current studies illustrate the importance of studying how financial and social needs interact to determine emotional and retributive actions in social dilemmas. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The egocentric nature of procedural justice: Social value orientation as moderator of reactions to decision-making procedures

In four studies, the authors investigated the individual-oriented versus social-oriented nature of procedural justice effects by comparing fairness-based responses to decision-making procedures among proself versus prosocial oriented individuals. In Studies 1 through 3, we measured participants’ social value orientation and manipulated whether or not they were granted or denied voice in a decision-making process. Results consistently revealed that the effects of voice versus no-voice on fairness-based perceptions, emotions, and behavioral intentions were significantly more pronounced for individuals with proself orientations than for individuals with prosocial orientations. These findings were extended in Study 4, a field study in which perceived procedural justice was a stronger predictor of satisfaction and organizational citizenship behaviors among proselfs than among prosocials. These findings suggest that procedural justice effects can be accounted for by self-oriented motives or needs, rather than prosocial motives that are often conceptualized as being associated with justice.

Why promises and threats need each other

AbstractDespite the pervasive use of promises and threats in social life, very little research has been devoted to examining the effectiveness of these interpersonal tactics in promoting cooperation in social dilemmas. Based on the Goal‐Prescribes‐Rationality principle, we hypothesized that cooperation should be most strongly enhanced when promises and threats are communicated in combination, rather than in isolation. Also, we hypothesized that the combination of promises and threats should be especially effective among individuals with prosocial rather than proself orientations. Two studies provided good evidence for the latter hypothesis, in that the combination of promises and threats was only effective in people with prosocial orientations, people who are concerned with equality and collective interest. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.