Selfish Choices Research Articles

CHILDFREE DAN RUANG PUBLIK: RESEPSI WARGANET TERHADAP PEREMPUAN CHILDFREE DALAM KOLOM KOMENTAR PADA KANAL YOUTUBE METRO TV NEWS

This study is motivated by the childfree choice for women which is now starting to become a new lifestyle among young Indonesian couples. This phenomenon is of course inversely proportional to the normative culture of Indonesian society, which expects married adults to have children. The childfree phenomenon then became a topic of conversation among netizens, especially in the YouTube comments space. This research aims to analyze and understand netizens' reception of childfree women in the video comment space entitled "Kick Andy- Childfree". Apart from that, to strengthen the role of the audience not only as consumers of media but also as producers of meaning. This research is located on the Metrotvnews Youtube channel which was uploaded on April 25 2022. Data sources are videos and comment transcripts which are analyzed using reception analysis. This research produced several findings that can be studied including; 1) Childfree choices and 'selfish choices' 2) Having children and social expectations 3) Childfree choices to 'enjoy the fruits of one's labor' 4) Women and a mother's 'natural instincts'. The findings show that there is a variety of acceptance of childfree women, ranging from comments that approve, praise, to reject. A message can be interpreted differently by netizens based on different sociocultural backgrounds, personal experiences, knowledge, religion and ethnicity. Even when decoders emphasize certain parts, they still make different readings. The presence of the YouTube comments space as a digital public space (public sphere) shows an increase in users' ability not only to express opinions, but to discuss and spark debate between users on controversial issues.

CHILDFREE IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF ISLAMIC LAW AND COMMUNITY VIEWS IN ASAHAN DISTRICT

Childfree is a choice made by a person or married couple who do not want to have children after marriage, whether biological children, stepchildren, or adopted children. The assumption is that the inability of a person or partner to be responsible for having children, fear, and financial conditions are the main factors in choosing childfree. This study is related to childfree ness in the perspective of Islamic law and the views of the people of Asahan Regency, and its impacts. The method in this study is qualitative research, with an empirical juridical approach. Descriptive nature with data collection techniques using field study techniques and literature review. The results of the study show that from an Islamic perspective, childfree is carried out by permanently disabling the reproductive system, so the law is unlawful. However, if it is done in a temporary period then the law is makruh because basically having children is a recommendation, not an obligation. This is also in line with Article 1 of Law Number 1 of 1974 concerning Marriage. In the opinion of some people in Asahan Regency, the choice of childfree is a private right of a person which cannot be questioned because basically in the 1945 Constitution Article 28E paragraph (2) stipulates that everyone has the right to freedom of expression of thoughts and attitudes according to their conscience, however, some others argue that the childfree choice in society is considered a selfish choice and violates nature. In addition, the impact of choosing childfree, especially for women, has a high risk in terms of health.

Information search processing affects social decisions

AbstractSocial decisions often require individuals to balance conflicts between their own selfish interests and the need for equality. The way information about available options is presented can have an impact on how people process information and make social decisions. In this study, we examined the effect of information presentation on social decisions in a mini‐dictator game, where participants must make binary choices about how to allocate money between themselves and another participant. We conducted two tasks with different presentation styles: the attribute‐based task, where attributes such as own payoffs or others' payoffs were displayed sequentially, and the alternative‐based task, where alternatives were displayed sequentially. We found that participants in the attribute‐based task made more selfish choices and were less sensitive to equality than those in the alternative‐based task. The direction of information search and the complexity level of information processing played a mediating role in the effect of task on social decisions. Our findings highlight the relationship between information search and social decisions, shedding light on the mechanisms and processes that underlie social decision‐making.

Reciprocal cortico-amygdala connections regulate prosocial and selfish choices in mice.

Decisions that favor one's own interest versus the interest of another individual depend on context and the relationships between individuals. The neurobiology underlying selfish choices or choices that benefit others is not understood. We developed a two-choice social decision-making task in which mice can decide whether to share a reward with their conspecifics. Preference for altruistic choices was modulated by familiarity, sex, social contact, hunger, hierarchical status and emotional state matching. Fiber photometry recordings and chemogenetic manipulations demonstrated that basolateral amygdala (BLA) neurons are involved in the establishment of prosocial decisions. In particular, BLA neurons projecting to the prelimbic (PL) region of the prefrontal cortex mediated the development of a preference for altruistic choices, whereas PL projections to the BLA modulated self-interest motives for decision-making. This provides a neurobiological model of altruistic and selfish choices with relevance to pathologies associated with dysfunctions in social decision-making.

Causal role of right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for norm-guided social decision making: A meta-analysis of TMS studies

Theoretical accounts ascribe the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) a crucial role in social decision making, but previous studies assessing the rDLPFC's function with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) provided inconsistent evidence. While some studies suggest that the rDLPFC promotes norm-guided behavior, others report the rDLPFC to implement selfish choices. To decide between these conflicting accounts, we conducted a meta-analysis of studies that investigated the impact of rDLPFC TMS on social decision making. While we observed no significant effect of rDLPFC TMS across all studies, moderator analyses revealed that the rDLPFC's role in social decision making crucially depends on the social context: in particular, we found that rDLPFC promotes norm-guided behavior predominantly when decision makers have to trade-off their interaction partners' intentions and fairness expectations against their selfish interests (reactive fairness). In contrast, there was no evidence that rDLPFC TMS affects prosocial giving (proactive fairness). Our results thus inform theoretical accounts by showing that brain stimulation over rDLPFC does not increase or decrease norm-guided behavior per se; instead, contextual factors determine the role of the rDLPFC in social interactions.

Moonflower by Kacen Callender

Reviewed by: Moonflower by Kacen Callender April Spisak Callender, Kacen Moonflower. Scholastic, 2022 [272p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781338636598 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781338636628 $17.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 5-8 Moon has never felt tethered to the regular world, plagued by a deep sadness they can't identify. Nightly journeys out of their body take them to the spirit realms, and Moon knows that these places hold the key to permanent freedom from Earth and their struggles. But Moon must save the realms after they make a selfish choice that upsets the balance of the worlds. Moon's single mother, meanwhile, is understandably alarmed that her only child said they don't belong on Earth before ceasing to speak for months, and she desperately hopes therapy will help Moon. To Moon, the spirit realm is truly where they belong, away from an everyday life filled with racism, hate, and tediousness: "There isn't any point in hiding from the truth when I see it everywhere. Black people like me, arrested and killed because of the color of their skin. Transgender and nonbinary people told we don't exist." Callender offers an elegant, mysterious story of a child who uses healing skills learned on the spirit side to anchor them to their waking life, though nothing is lost if the story is instead read as a psychological, metaphorical journey. There's no magical, instant fix, but Moon ultimately decides to stick around, and that is certainly a notable start. [End Page 347] Copyright © 2022 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Fairness takes time: Development of cooperative decision making in fairness context

The current study examined the development of fairness behavior and tested whether children’s fair choices are fast and intuitive or slow and deliberate. Reaction times were measured while 4- to 9-year-olds (N = 94, 49 girls, 84.6% White) completed a novel social decision-making task contrasting fair choices with selfish choices. Fairness behavior increased during childhood, shifting from predominantly selfish choices among young children to fair choices by 7 years of age. Moreover, young children’s fair choices were slow and deliberate, whereas reaction times did not predict older children’s choices. These findings contrast with adults’ intuitive cooperation and point to protracted development and learning of cooperative decision making in fairness contexts.

Is Deception a Consequence of Emotion? Disposition, Mood, and Decision Frame.

Deception often implicates cognitive resources, and emotions have rarely been used to account for deception. Deception is examined using a two-person cheap talk game (N= 219) in three payoff groups (participant and partner payoff difference: none, small, large) where each participant has to make two deception choices and two dictator control choices presented in two decision frames (Gain Deception, Loss Deception, Gain Control, and Loss Control). Measures of emotion (i.e., dispositional reward-punishment sensitivity and affect mood) were used to account for the four choices. The results showed that unfair gain-sharing in the dictator control was frame-independent. Emotions accounted for loss frame choices in the payoff group that inflicted the largest partner loss. Interaction of reward and punishment sensitivity increased partner-deception in a loss frame, whereas the interaction reduced selfish choice in the dictator control, with negative mood and reward sensitivity as a deterrent of selfish choice in loss control. Thus, we find that including emotions to account for deception might improve our understanding of deception, especially in developing countries.

Actions and the Self: I Give, Therefore I am?

Self-signaling models predict less selfish behavior in a probabilistic giving setting as individuals are expected to invest in a pro-social identity. However, there is also substantial evidence that people tend to exploit situational excuses for selfish choices (for instance, uncertainty) and behave more selfishly. We contrast these two motivations (identity management and self-deception) experimentally in order to test which one is more prevalent in a reciprocal giving setting. Trustees' back transfer choices are elicited for five different transfer levels of the trustor. Moreover, we ask trustees to provide their back transfer schedule for different scenarios that vary the implementation probability of the back transfer. This design allows us to identify subjects who reciprocate and analyze how these reciprocators respond when self-image relevant factors are varied. Our results indicate that self-deception is prevalent when subjects make the back transfer choice. Twice as many subjects seem to exploit situational excuses than subjects who appear to invest in a pro-social identity.JEL classifications: C72, C91, D80, D91

Intuition rather than deliberation determines selfish and prosocial choices.

Human interactions often involve a choice between acting selfishly (in ones' own interest) and acting prosocially (in the interest of others). Fast and slow models of prosociality posit that people intuitively favor 1 of these choices (the selfish choice in some models, the prosocial choice in other models) and need to correct this intuition through deliberation to make the other choice. We present 7 studies that force us to reconsider this longstanding corrective dual-process view. Participants played various economic games in which they had to choose between a prosocial and a selfish option. We used a 2-response paradigm in which participants had to give their first, initial response under time pressure and cognitive load. Next, participants could take all the time they wanted to reflect on the problem and give a final response. This allowed us to identify the intuitively generated response that preceded the final response given after deliberation. Results consistently showed that both prosocial and selfish responses were predominantly made intuitively rather than after deliberate correction. Pace the deliberate correction view, the findings indicate that making prosocial and selfish choices does typically not rely on different types of reasoning modes (intuition vs. deliberation) but rather on different types of intuitions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Do people intervene to make others behave prosocially?

We experimentally investigate people's willingness to intervene in others' decision-making in order to promote a charitable donation. We find that only a minority of those subjects who would donate themselves enforce the donation by banning the selfish choice from the decision-maker's choice menu. Bans are more acceptable if they are implemented only after the decision-makers could choose between the selfish and the prosocial option themselves. Also, many subjects decide against offering decision-makers a monetary incentive to switch from the selfish to the prosocial choice. We discuss potential hypotheses about underlying motivations for the (non-)usage of interventions, with a special focus on the hypothesis that interventions to promote prosocial choice are more acceptable the more they respect the autonomy of others.

Reaping a benefit at the expense of multiple others: How are the losses of others counted?

We investigate individual decisions that produce gains for oneself, while imposing losses on a group of others. We theorize, based on the notion of empathy, that decision-makers consider the magnitude of the pain or loss they inflict on an individual in the group, but are largely insensitive to the number of individuals in the group who suffer losses. Studies involving personal choices or judgments of others’ choices largely confirmed these predictions. They also revealed a dispersion effect, whereby participants made more selfish choices, and judged others’ selfish choices more lightly, when the social losses were dispersed more thinly across a group. It appears that decision-makers’ empathy for others who suffer losses is not readily adjusted to the number of people affected or to the aggregated losses. It also appears that empathy mediates judgments of selfish behavior. The findings are related to theories of empathy, and decisions under conflicts of interest.

Punishing or helping: The influence of acute stress onthird-party decision-making

In modern society, acute stress has become one of the main risk factors affecting human mental health and quality of life. Stress not only has a profound impact on the brain and cognition, but also affects human prosocial behaviors and social interactions. Acute stress has been implicated in modulating various social behaviors, including trust and empathy. However, it remains unclear how stress influences the third-party altruistic decision, especially in the face of conflicts between altruistic decisions and self-interest. When facing with a violation of justice, people show high probability of self-sacrifice to restore justice, but the optimal decision of the impact of stress on social decision-making in different circumstances is unclear. To address this question, we used a third-party intervention paradigm to assess participants’ choice preferences after exposure to physical stress. In the third-party intervention task, participants could transfer MUs from their endowment to punish a norm violator or help the victim, and they could also leave the MUs to themselves. After the decision-making task was completed, participants were also asked to complete an analogous scenario task, including two crime scenarios: A robbery scenario and a traffic accident scenario. They were asked to put themselves in these situations and make calls as soon as possible based on priority, that is, call 110, the police, (i.e., punish offenders); call 120, the First Aid Center, (i.e., help victims); and call for themselves (i.e., defend their own interests). First, we found that selfish choices focused on the condition of fair offers. Second, compared with the moderate unfair condition, the serious unfair condition increased punishment and help behavior. Additionally, for the trade-off between the two prosocial choices under the condition of moderate unfairness, the participants in the stress group tended to increase the punishment behavior and reduce the help behavior, when compared with the control group. We also found that the increase of punishment behavior was not only reflected in the choice preference, but also in the intensity of punishment. The participants in the stress group punished more, consistent with the “fight or flight” pattern, which is considered to be the typical human response to stress. However, under the serious unfairness condition, there was no significant difference between the stress group and the non-stress group. In the scenario task, although there was no significant difference between the two groups in the three options, the stress group evaluated the accident scene to be more serious. These findings suggest that when the third-party helping and punishment as an optional prosocial behavior, stressed individuals are accustomed to choosing punishment behavior. This study provides evidence and explanations for studying the effects of stress on prosocial behavior.

A household optimum utility approach for modeling joint activity-travel choices in congested road networks

This study proposes a new household optimum (HO) utility approach to model the intra-household interactions between household members by heterogeneous household type with different size in deciding their daily joint/solo activities and travel in congested road networks. In contrast to the conventional approach based on selfish choices of individuals to maximize their own utility, the proposed approach considers the activity-travel choices of all household members to maximize their household utility. Based on the HO utility approach, a new household activity-based network equilibrium model is proposed to simultaneously take into account the time-dependent household daily activity-travel scheduling and traffic assignment problems within a unified modeling framework. Two new household-oriented network equilibrium principles, namely, HO and household-based system optimum (HSO), are introduced together with the formulations of their equivalent mathematical programming problems. The analytical relationships between HO, HSO, conventional user equilibrium and individual-based system optimum, and their properties are then investigated. The proposed model is formulated as an equivalent variational inequality problem and solved by a diagonalization method in a supernetwork platform. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the merits of the proposed model, together with the key insights of the results that highlight the importance of considering joint activities and travel in travel demand forecasting and transportation network design.

Endogenous group formation and responsibility diffusion: An experimental study

We study the effects of varying individual pivotality and endogenous group entry on the selfishness of group decisions. Selfish choices by groups are often linked to the possibility of diffusing responsibility; the moral costs of these decisions appear smaller when individual pivotality is reduced. Our experimental design explores unanimity voting under distinct defaults to identify this effect. In exogenously formed groups we find evidence of responsibility diffusion, but this diminishes with repetition. Our results also demonstrate the role of self-selection in generating differences in group behaviour depending on individual pivotality. Driven by a heterogeneous selection pattern, endogenous group formation amplifies the effects of a change in pivotality. Some people actively seek an environment to diffuse responsibility, while others join groups to promote pro-social behaviour.

Constructing Spiritual Motherhood in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Drawing on an ethnographic study of Roman Catholic sisters in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I show how women in the Global South draw on religious imagery to redefine cultural ideals of womanhood and family responsibility. By taking the religious vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, the Congolese sisters I interviewed seemingly betray local expectations regarding women’s responsibility to reproduce and repair the clan. Although sisters’ vows subject them to social ridicule for violating cultural expectations to bear children and support kin, they devise new strategies to negotiate the connection between womanhood and the maternal role of caregiver and nurturer outside of marriage and fertility. In social ministries that affirm their communal, moral, and spiritual ties to others, the sisters realize these cultural ideals through a “spiritual motherhood” that transforms their traditional heteronormative obligations. Framing their decision to live outside accepted kinship structures in religious terms mutes the radicalness of this lifestyle and provides religious legitimation for what would otherwise be considered a selfish choice for a woman acting independent of family well-being. In this context, I demonstrate how doing religion is inseparable from doing gender as Catholic sisters embody alternative ways of being a woman in post-colonial Congolese society through their religious practices.

Motivated memory in dictator games

The memory people have of their past behavior is one of the main sources of information about themselves. To study whether people retrieve their memory self-servingly in social encounters, we designed an experiment in which participants play binary dictator games and then have to recall the amounts allocated to the receivers. We find evidence of motivated memory through selective recalls: dictators remember more their altruistic than their selfish choices. A causal effect of the responsibility of decisions is identified, as the recall asymmetry disappears when options are selected randomly by the computer program. Incentivizing memory accuracy increases the percentage of dictators' correct recalls only when they behaved altruistically. In contrast, there is no clear evidence of motivated memory through biased memory errors, i.e., overly optimistic recalls: dictators recall selectively but do not bias the direction and magnitude of these recalls in a self-serving way.

FOOLING MYSELF OR FOOLING OBSERVERS? AVOIDING SOCIAL PRESSURES BY MANIPULATING PERCEPTIONS OF DESERVINGNESS OF OTHERS

We present a novel experiment demonstrating strategies selfish individuals utilize to avoid social pressure to be altruistic. Subjects participate in a trust game, after which they have an opportunity to state their beliefs about their opponent's actions. Subsequently, subjects participate in a task designed to “reveal” their true beliefs. Subjects who initially made selfish choices falsely state their beliefs about their opponent's kindness. Their “revealed” beliefs were significantly more accurate, which exposed subjects' knowledge that their selfishness was unjustifiable by their opponent's behavior. The initial false statements complied with social norms, suggesting subjects' attempts to project a more favorable social image. (JEL C9, D03, D83)

SHARING IS BEAUTIFUL: AN APPLICATION OF ULTIMATUM GAME

Economics is a science which is based on decisions of individuals who aims to satisfy their needs. Economic theory which is originated from west is developed by assuming that human makes rational and selfish decisions. Homo economicus individual does not share and interest in only his/her benefits. Ultimatum game is usually used in analysing decision mechanisms of human. This game shows that individual whether prefers selfish choices or fair choices. Researches show that individuals prefer fair alternatives. The aim of this research is to determine preferences of individuals in Turkish society. To this aim we conducted an experiment in students of Kastamonu University Economics and Administrative Sciences. As a result of this research, it is found that individuals are more willing to share and do not act rationally when they think that distribution is not fair.

Chimpanzee Cooperation Is Fast and Independent From Self-Control

Large-scale cooperation is a hallmark of our species and appears to be unique among primates. Yet the evolutionary mechanisms that drove the emergence of humanlike patterns of cooperation remain unclear. Studying the cognitive processes underlying cooperative behavior in apes, our closest living relatives, can help identify these mechanisms. Accordingly, we employed a novel test battery to assess the willingness of 40 chimpanzees to donate resources, instrumentally help others, and punish a culpable thief. We found that chimpanzees were faster to make prosocial than selfish choices and that more prosocial individuals made the fastest responses. Further, two measures of self-control did not predict variation in prosocial responding, and individual performance across cooperative tasks did not covary. These results show that chimpanzees and humans share key cognitive processes for cooperation, despite differences in the scope of their cooperative behaviors.