Article

Effects of eye images on everyday cooperative behavior: A field experiment

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  • Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris-PSL
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Abstract

Laboratory studies have shown that images of eyes can cause people to behave more cooperatively in some economic games, and in a previous experiment, we found that eye images increased the level of contributions to an honesty box. However, the generality and robustness of the eyes effect is not known. Here, we extended our research on the effects of eye images on cooperative behavior to a novel context—littering behavior in a university cafeteria—and attempted to elucidate the mechanism by which they work, by displaying them both in conjunction with, and not associated with, verbal messages to clear one's litter. We found a halving of the odds of littering in the presence of posters featuring eyes, as compared to posters featuring flowers. This effect was independent of whether the poster exhorted litter clearing or contained an unrelated message, suggesting that the effect of eye images cannot be explained by their drawing attention to verbal instructions. There was some support for the hypothesis that eye images had a larger effect when there were few people in the café than when the café was busy. Our results confirm that the effects of subtle cues of observation on cooperative behavior can be large in certain real-world contexts.

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... Eye representations can also increase compliance with social norms, shown in studies of litter dropping (Bateson, Callow, Holmes, Roche, & Nettle, 2013;Ernest-Jones, Nettle, & Bateson, 2011) and can reduce antisocial behaviour such as bicycle theft (Nettle, Nott, & Bateson, 2012). It should be noted, however, that a meta-analysis showed that the watching eyes effect may be less prevalent than previously supposed (Northover, Pedersen, Cohen, & Andrews, 2017) or may only operate in particular contexts (Northover et al., 2017;Vogt, Efferson, Berger, & Fehr, 2015). ...
... From these two meta-analyses (Dear et al., 2019;Northover et al., 2017) it appears that the watching eyes effect is much stronger in eliciting the avoidance of anti-social behaviour, than eliciting prosocial behaviour. In these human studies, some researchers used actual photographs of eyes (Bateson et al., 2006;Ekström, 2012;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Nettle et al., 2012) whereas others used stylised eye patterns such as the Egyptian "Eye of Horus" (Haley & Fessler, 2005;Oda, Niwa, Honma, & Hiraishi, 2011) or cartoon representations of eyes (Powell, Roberts, & Nettle, 2012). The stylized eyes were still effective in eliciting prosocial behaviour (Haley & Fessler, 2005;Oda et al., 2011;Powell et al., 2012) although there is no study comparing stylized to photographed eyes. ...
... Evidence for the "watching eyes" effect on prosocial behaviour in humans is mixed. Some studies report that watching eyes do not affect prosocial behaviour (Cai, Huang, Wu, & Kou, 2015;Northover et al., 2017;Vogt et al., 2015) and others report an effect on various measures of this behaviour (Bateson et al., 2006;Ekström, 2012;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Haley & Fessler, 2005;Oda et al., 2011;Nettle et al., 2012). However, few studies have focused on the possible protective or guarding function of the eye designs, with the bicycle theft study being a notable exception. ...
Article
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Eyespots are found across many taxa, usually for predator intimidation. In human artefacts, eye designs have been presumed to have an apotropaic function (warding off supernatural evil and envy) rather than an evolutionary function related to protection from agonistic interactions. We hypothesised that, instead, eyespot designs may have been used in human cultures for intimidation of opponents (deimatic display). We examined 1,070 objects from Papua New Guinea, where eyespots are frequently displayed on various objects. We predicted that objects used for guarding or protection would be more likely to have eyespots than domestic objects. Chi-square tests of independence showed that significantly more canoe prows and shields and fewer domestic objects had eyespots than expected. Furthermore, we surveyed 81 respondents, showing objects with and without eyespot patterns. Chi-square tests showed that objects with eyespots elicited significantly more fear and anxiety related emotions, and non-eyespot designs elicited more calm and relaxed emotions than expected. Thus, objects with eyespots were considered more intimidating than those displaying geometric, or plain designs. This research provides empirical evidence for the use of eyespot designs for deimatic display in humans and possible convergent evolution of eyespots due to gene – culture coevolution.
... However, when comparing the performance of those who were under implied social presence to those who merely received points, a difference in performance was revealed, suggesting that there is little need for a visual representation of one's partner to elicit changes in performance. Our results build on prior evidence indicating that the threshold to suggest a social presence is actually quite low (Bateson et al., 2006;Dahl et al., 2001;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011). Research occurring in-person has manipulated social presence in various ways, including asking participants to enter a restroom that is either open or closed to the public (Dahl et al., 2001), or placing eye-like stimuli in specific experimental locations (Bateson et al., 2006;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Francey & Bergmüller, 2012). ...
... Our results build on prior evidence indicating that the threshold to suggest a social presence is actually quite low (Bateson et al., 2006;Dahl et al., 2001;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011). Research occurring in-person has manipulated social presence in various ways, including asking participants to enter a restroom that is either open or closed to the public (Dahl et al., 2001), or placing eye-like stimuli in specific experimental locations (Bateson et al., 2006;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Francey & Bergmüller, 2012). Finding from these studies reported embarrassment increased with increasing chance of encountering another individual (Dahl et al., 2001), and the mere presence of images of eyes leads to larger donations and greater likelihood of cleaning shared spaces (Bateson et al., 2006;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Francey & Bergmüller, 2012). ...
... Research occurring in-person has manipulated social presence in various ways, including asking participants to enter a restroom that is either open or closed to the public (Dahl et al., 2001), or placing eye-like stimuli in specific experimental locations (Bateson et al., 2006;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Francey & Bergmüller, 2012). Finding from these studies reported embarrassment increased with increasing chance of encountering another individual (Dahl et al., 2001), and the mere presence of images of eyes leads to larger donations and greater likelihood of cleaning shared spaces (Bateson et al., 2006;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Francey & Bergmüller, 2012). Thus, it may be because of this low threshold for suggesting a social presence that we did not find a difference in performance between our four levels of implied social presence. ...
... Since then, the watching eyes effect has become one of the most hotly debated topics in psychology. On the one hand, a number of studies have shown that such minimal cues to being watched can increase a range of cooperative behaviors, like prosocial fund-allocations in economic games (e.g., Baillon et al., 2013;Mifune et al., 2010;Rigdon et al., 2009), generosity and charitable donations (e.g., Fathi et al., 2014;Keller & Pfattheicher, 2011), or litter cleanup and pro-environmental acts (e.g., Bateson et al., 2015;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011). On the other hand, there is a growing number of null findings (e.g., Fehr & Schneider, 2010;Manesi & Pollet, 2017;Manesi et al., 2016;Northover et al., 2017;Vogt et al., 2015). ...
... For instance, a study in a supermarket demonstrated that during busy weeks, eye cues increased donations to charity boxes by about 30% whereas during quiet weeks, they increased donations by about 60% (Powell et al., 2012, see also Ekström, 2012;Oda & Ichihashi, 2016). Likewise, other studies have shown that the presence of few (rather than many) people in real-world settings can enhance the watching eyes effect on other cooperative behaviors, such as reduced littering (Bateson et al., 2015;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011; but see Bateson et al., 2013). ...
... Increasing research evidence shows that eye images can enhance various forms of prosocial behavior that are relatively inexpensive, easy to perform and (generally) expected from the individuals, such as cleaning up one's own litter in public settings (Bateson et al., 2015Ernest-Jones et al., 2011), paying for one's drinks (Bateson et al., 2006), complying with the law , and voting in elections (Panagopoulos & van der Linden, 2016;Panagopoulos, 2014aPanagopoulos, , 2014b. Other forms of low-cost prosociality affected by eye cues are the tendency to embrace proenvironmental attitudes (Manesi et al., 2015), to split resources and responsibilities between oneself and a peer relatively fairly (e.g., Haley & Fessler, 2005;Manesi et al., 2016;Nettle et al., 2013;Rigdon et al., 2009, but see Matsugasaki et al., 2015), to tell the truth (Oda et al., 2015), and to comply with hand hygiene practice (Beyfus et al., 2016;Pfattheicher et al., 2017). ...
Article
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The watching eyes effect has gained significant attention in recent years both from scientists and from policy makers and professionals in the field. The phenomenon posits that the mere presence of eye cues can promote prosocial behavior. However, there is a growing debate about the generality of the effect across various measures and contexts. This review seeks to combine various distinct -and formerly isolated- perspectives by identifying four key components for effective interventions based on the watching eyes effect: Anonymity, crowdedness, costs, and exposure. Eye cues need to reduce perceived anonymity, be placed in non-crowded places, target low-cost prosocial acts and appear for a short amount of time. Next to these conditions, we discuss implications for other cues to reputation and recommend directions that will stimulate further research and applications in society.
... In particular, most of our actions are determined by the social environment, or, better, by what we perceive as our social environment. Laboratory [2] and field studies [3] [4] have shown that subtle cues of the presence of other people, such as a photograph or a synthetic eyes on a computer screen, alter, in an almost unconscious way, our prosocial behaviour, as well as our performance and physiological activation. Human beings are therefore deeply influenced by the social environment in which they live. ...
... Instead, a total of 174 participants (129 females), with an average age of 22 (s.d. 4,7), were engaged in the study 2 (condition 3 and 4). A sample consisting of 246 individuals (167 females), derived from previous studies, was selected for the analyses concerning the study 3 (condition 1 and 2 vs. condition 3 and 4). ...
Preprint
Reputation systems are currently used, often with success, to ensure the functioning of online services as well as of e-commerce sites. Despite the relationship between reputation and material cooperative behaviours is quite supported, less obvious appears the relationship with informative behaviours, which are crucial for the transmission of reputational information and therefore for the maintenance of cooperation among individuals. The purpose of this study was to verify how reputation affects cooperation dynamics in virtual environment, within a social dilemma situation (i.e., where there are incentives to act selfishly). The results confirm that reputation can activate prosocial conducts, however it highlights also the limitations and distortions that reputation can create.
... In neural circuitry, gazing eyes may activate a fear response (Schneier et al., 2009) and other negative emotions (Sato et al., 2004). Moreover, gazing behavior may evoke a submissive and compliant attitude in the target subjects (Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Nettle et al., 2013). A number of experimental studies over the years indicated that people are more likely to engage in prosocial behaviors when they sense that they are being watched (Bateson et al., 2006;Cañigueral & Hamilton, 2019;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Manesi et al., 2016;Pfattheicher & Keller, 2015). ...
... Moreover, gazing behavior may evoke a submissive and compliant attitude in the target subjects (Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Nettle et al., 2013). A number of experimental studies over the years indicated that people are more likely to engage in prosocial behaviors when they sense that they are being watched (Bateson et al., 2006;Cañigueral & Hamilton, 2019;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Manesi et al., 2016;Pfattheicher & Keller, 2015). In summary, gazing functions as an important factor in regulating social interactions and competitiveness for humans and non-human animals (Giacomantonio et al., 2018). ...
Article
The evil eye, the harmful effects of the envious gaze, is a common superstitious belief in many societies around the world, including Turkey. Since ancient times, people have developed a wide variety of practices and rituals to ward off the evil eye. It is generally believed that the evil eye is motivated by one of the most challenging emotions, envy. The discussion of envy has a long history in psychoanalysis. Unfortunately, psychoanalytic self-psychology has neglected envy and confined it to the concept of fragmentation products. This paper aims to contribute a self-psychological understanding of an envy-related cultural concept, the evil eye. The evil eye-related phenomena in Turkey, such as the harmful potential of gazes, the use of talismans and amulets for protection, and the fear of praising and exhibition, are discussed from a self-psychological perspective. Several short clinical vignettes delineating the evil eye in clinical practice are presented.
... We found that informing participants about nondeceptive environments leads to less dishonesty and that when deception is allowed and participants are aware of being observed, then honesty increases. Consequently, this echoes previous theoretical accounts (Ayal et al., 2015) and findings (Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Nettle et al., 2012;Pfattheicher & Keller, 2015;Schild et al., 2019;Zhong et al., 2010) that cues of being observed (i.e., anonymity or visibility; see Abeler et al., 2019) decrease cheating, which suggests that participants are more skeptical about their anonymity when experiencing experimental deception. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. ...
... Additionally, while dishonest behavior occurred across all conditions, our results show that when participants were in a deceptive environment and were made aware that their performance in the dieroll task was being observed, such participants cheated significantly less-even comparable with the conditions where no deception was allowed, which to some degree aligns with previous findings on the effects of cues of anonymity or being observed (i.e., visibility) on cheating behavior (Abeler et al., 2019;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Nettle et al., 2012;Pfattheicher & Keller, 2015;Schild et al., 2019;Zhong et al., 2010). ...
Article
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Psychologists, economists, and philosophers have long argued that in environments where deception is normative, moral behavior is harmed. In this article, we show that individuals making decisions within minimally deceptive environments do not behave more dishonestly than in nondeceptive environments. We demonstrate the latter using an example of experimental deception within established institutions, such as laboratories and institutional review boards. We experimentally manipulated whether participants received information about their deception. Across three well-powered studies, we empirically demonstrate that minimally deceptive environments do not affect downstream dishonest behavior. Only when participants were in a minimally deceptive environment and aware of being observed, their dishonest behavior decreased. Our results show that the relationship between deception and dishonesty might be more complicated than previous interpretations have suggested and expand the understanding of how deception might affect (im)moral behavior. We discuss possible limitations and future directions as well as the applied nature of these findings.
... We found that informing participants about nondeceptive environments leads to less dishonesty and that when deception is allowed and participants are aware of being observed, then honesty increases. Consequently, this echoes previous theoretical accounts (Ayal et al., 2015) and ndings (Zhong et al., 2010;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Nettle et al., 2012;Pfattheicher & Keller, 2015;Schild et al., 2019) that cues of being observed (i.e., anonymity or visibility; see Abeler et al., 2019) decrease cheating, which suggests that participants are more skeptical about their anonymity when experiencing experimental deception. ...
... Additionally, while dishonest behavior occurred across all conditions, our results show that when participants were in a deceptive environment and were made aware that their performance in the die-roll task was being observed, such participants cheated signi cantly less-even comparable to the conditions where no deception was allowed, which to some degree aligns with previous ndings on the effects of cues of anonymity or being observed (i.e., visibility) on cheating behavior (Zhong et al., 2010;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Nettle et al., 2012;Pfattheicher & Keller, 2015;Abeler et al., 2019;Schild et al., 2019). ...
Preprint
Full-text available
Psychologists, economists, and philosophers have long argued that in environments where deception is normative, moral behavior is harmed. In this article, we show that individuals making decisions within minimally deceptive environments do not behave more dishonestly than in nondeceptive environments. We demonstrate the latter using an example of experimental deception within established institutions, such as laboratories and institutional review boards. We experimentally manipulated whether participants received information about their deception. Across three well-powered studies, we empirically demonstrate that minimally deceptive environments do not affect downstream dishonest behavior. Only when participants were in a minimally deceptive environment and aware of being observed, their dishonest behavior decreased. Our results show that the relationship between deception and dishonesty might be more complicated than previous interpretations have suggested and expand the understanding how deception might affect (im)moral behavior. We discuss possible limitations and future directions as well as the applied nature of these findings.
... The effect of reputation-based interventions (watching eyes) on individuals' injunctive norms has been extensively explored in field experiments aimed at reducing littering (see e.g., Ernest-jones et al., 2011 [21]; and Francey & Bergmuller, 2012 [23]), which, together with fostering recycling behaviour, is seen as an important factor to tackle climate change (see Wijkman & Skånberg, 2015 [66]). ...
... Most of these studies suggest watching eyes are a powerful instrument to induce feelings of being monitored and reputational concerns, thus increasing norm-compliant behaviour (see e.g., Ernest-Jones et al., 2011 [21]; Francey & Bergmüller, 2012 [23]) or, slightly different, they suggest that the presence of visual nudges may increase feelings of surveillance and therefore help reducing noncompliant behaviours (e.g., Batenson et al. 2013 [7]). However, less is known on the role of human eyes on re-directing attention to written and easy to grasp instructions, which will be the objective of this analysis. ...
Preprint
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This paper aims to test whether visual nudges help improving attention towards existing instructions to increase waste sorting accuracy. The study was conducted in a quasi-experimental setting over a period of 8 weeks in two buildings of a large UK university campus. Two treatments were tested against a control group: one considered the impact of visual nudges in the form of human eyes on recycling behaviour; the other one combined human eye with pre-existing sorting instructions. Results show that the combination of visual and information nudges decreased sorting errors by 7 percentage points. By contrast, visual nudges alone increased sorting error by 4.5 percentage points. These findings prove that, when combined, information and a visual nudge are cost-effective tools to improve sorting behaviour with strong efficacy, bringing new evidence to experiments based on neuroscientific theories. Behavioural Economics, Recycling, Neuroscience, Nudges
... Por su parte, la investigación que explora el papel de la señalización en el cambio del comportamiento ambiental se ha realizado principalmente en campus universitarios. Sin embargo, hay algunos estudios que han puesto a prueba las señales directamente sobre espacios públicos para generar cambios en las personas en problemáticas asociadas a la conducción de vehículos y el transporte (Austin et al., 2006;Todorov, 2013;Kormos et al., 2015), la vigilancia en espacios públicos (Bateson et al., 2013), el ahorro de energía y el reciclaje en sitios públicos (Dwyer et al., 2015;Liu & Yang, 2022;Lotti et al., 2023) y el comportamiento cooperativo (Ernest-Jones, et al., 2011). No obstante, es poco lo que se ha explorado sobre la importancia de la señalización para educar a los ciudadanos en convivencia, con algunas excepciones recientes (Qin & Chen, 2022). ...
Article
Full-text available
Este artículo presenta los resultados de un análisis de contenido de 60 señales, orientadas a laconvivencia ciudadana, seleccionadas aleatoriamente, ubicadas en espacios públicos, sociolugaresy no-lugares. El análisis se realiza a partir de las características perceptuales, ubicación, tipo deregla social que se demanda seguir, y si en ellas se establecen macro o metacontingencias paraincentivar comportamientos urbanos responsables (CUR). Los resultados reflejan que las señalesestán orientadas a la seguridad, higiene, movilidad, cuidado del ambiente y del patrimonio; difierenen cuanto al tipo de beneficio o sanción que anuncian por seguir o no la regla; no siguen un patrónunificado en su diseño, y son pocas las que enuncian el beneficio colectivo por ajustarse a las reglas.Se discute la importancia para las administraciones de la ciudad del diseño de una señalizaciónorientada hacia el seguimiento de reglas que promueven CUR dentro de un sistema integrado quedefina sus características perceptuales, le informe a la ciudadanía sobre los resultados productodel seguimiento de las reglas de convivencia mediante macro y metacontingencias y planifique suubicación dentro del espacio urbano.
... Our results have potentially impactful applications for policy design. Several mechanisms to promote pro-social behaviour have been explored in previous work, including giving material reward, such as a t-shirt or a mug, in exchange to a pro-social action [75][76] , augmenting donations using matching [77][78] , making people's actions observable by others [79][80] , informing people about the actions of others to make a social norm salient [81][82] , giving gifts while asking for a donation, in order to induce a reciprocal feeling of obligation [83][84] , soliciting people to cooperate [85][86] , and many others (see Kraft-Todd et al 6 for a review). Our results expand this list of mechanisms significantly. ...
Preprint
The conflict between pro-self and pro-social behaviour is at the core of many key problems of our time, as, for example, the reduction of air pollution and the redistribution of scarce resources. For the well-being of our societies, it is thus crucial to find mechanisms to promote pro-social choices over egoistic ones. Particularly important, because cheap and easy to implement, are those mechanisms that can change people's behaviour without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives, the so-called "nudges". Previous research has found that moral nudges (e.g., making norms salient) can promote pro-social behaviour. However, little is known about whether their effect persists over time and spills across context. This question is key in light of research showing that pro-social actions are often followed by selfish actions, thus suggesting that some moral manipulations may backfire. Here we present a class of simple moral nudges that have a great positive impact on pro-sociality. In Studies 1-4 (total N = 1,400), we use economic games to demonstrate that asking subjects to self-report "what they think is the morally right thing to do" does not only increase pro-sociality in the choice immediately after, but also in subsequent choices, and even when the social context changes. In Study 5, we explore whether moral nudges promote charity donations to humanitarian organisations in a large (N=1,800) crowdfunding campaign. We find that, in this context, moral nudges increase donations by about 44 percent.
... To make an example, social studies on the impact of being watched on prosocial behavior found that subjects acted in a significantly more generous and compliant way when in the presence of an experimenter, or even just a picture of eyes (Ernest-Jones, Nettle and Bateson, 2011;Nettle, Nott and Bateson, 2012;Burnham and Hare, 2007). This remained true even when there was no visual stimulus that made subjects sense they were being watched, in fact, a study by Gerber, Green and Larimer (2008) found that voters were more mobilized by the suggestion of publicly exposing the names of non-voters, than by the opposite suggestion of publicly exposing the names of voters, indicating how the most mobilizing strategy may be one that elicits a fear of social punishment and shame, instead of a strategy that rewards good behavior. ...
Thesis
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A large body of literature in political science has tried to determine the factors behind public political behavior and choices, in an effort to predict election results and understand the dynamics behind the relationship between public and candidates in a democracy. This thesis explores the literature regarding the more psychological aspects of political behavior, connecting research from the realms of neuroscience and biology, to behavioral economics and political psychology. Findings from these studies seriously undermine the hypothesis of rationality that has historically been assumed for the electorate, showing that the core of decision making lies less within the field of free will, and more within the grips of determinism. While the hypothesis of free will is not completely rejected, given the complexity of the causal factors behind decision making, an argument is made for the irrationality of the electorate, where irrationality is intended as the opposite of freely, thoughtfully and consciously evaluated behavior and reasoning.
... Amemiya & Ohtomo, 2012). This behavioural susceptibility to cues of being watched is termed the watching eyes effect, and has spanned prolific research over the past decades (Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Van Lange & Manesi, 2023). In these studies, the effects described upon the perception of eyes and eye-like stimuli have been classified as: effects of attention capture; enhanced self-awareness; enhanced memory; activation of pro-social behaviours, and; positive appraisal of others (Conty et al., 2016). ...
Article
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Despite the tight link between the visibility of the iris and pupil, the perceived effects of these two have been studied largely in isolation. We demonstrate, across two experimental studies, that the effects of perceived pupil size are dependent on the visibility of the iris. In a first study, our participants donated more and had more positive impressions of portraits of non-human primates when these were manipulated to appear having larger pupils. Post-hoc inspection of our data suggested that the difference was greater for species with more conspicuous irises. In a second study, we concomitantly manipulated iris brightness and pupil size. Brighter irises and larger pupils elicited greater donations. Participants rated photographs with brighter irises as cuter, more attractive and friendlier, but only when they had dilated pupils. Our results have methodological implications for studies manipulating eye appearance, and help interpret results from previous studies.
... The second element refers to opportunity, which suggests that individuals take advantage of circumstances in their environment (Hartley & Kelly, 2010). Opportunity for fraudulent behavior is often created by nonexistent or ineffective controls over that behavior, or when there is the possibility and ability to override controls (Abdullahi & Mansor, 2015;Brown et al., 2016;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011). Research on fund investment, for example, suggests that when individuals were primed for a mindset of vigilance, this form of control increased their ability to notice and regulate their own fraudulent behavior (Zhang et al., 2015). ...
Article
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Plain language summary Understanding students’ academic cheating using the fraud diamond theory Purpose: To examine whether the Fraud Diamond theory explains fraudulent academic behavior (e.g., cheating on exams, plagiarizing essays). More specifically, to determine the relationship between the prevalence of academic fraud and students’ perceptions of the severity and whether the ability to justify fraudulent academic behavior is related to the students’ perception of its severity. Methods: A survey was administered to 1,032 university students who agreed to participate in the study. Hypotheses were tested using correlational and predictive statistical techniques. Conclusions: The Fraud Diamond theory can be used to explain the prevalence of students’ fraudulent academic behavior. The severity of such behavior is explained by the students’ ability to justify their fraudulent actions. The more the students cheat, the less severe they find this behavior to be, suggesting that students feel that cheating occasionally is not a big deal. Implications: Promoting a culture of integrity is more than just the implementation of control mechanisms of face-to-face and virtual invigilation. Programs of academic integrity including institutional, group, and individual level approaches are needed to create a sense of moral identity and self-control mechanisms which will reduce the propensity to cheat. Limitations: The data for this study is drawn from the students subjective self-reported experiences of their fraudulent behavior and may not accurately reflect objective prevalence of fraudulent behavior.
... From a psychological point of view, the "moral" gaze of the presence plays a role through the eye effect (Wu & Cui, 2020), and many previous studies have used eye pictures to verify changes in human behavior under gaze (Bateson et al., 2006;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Nettle et al., 2012). ...
Article
Tourists construct and consume tourist destinations through the tourist gaze. Simultaneously, their behaviors are exposed to the gaze of bystanders, whose “moral” gaze can be transformed into silent comments that condemn or praise, placing tourists under invisible moral surveillance and regulating their behaviors. This paper attempts to study the influence of moral gaze on tourists’ environmental responsibility behavior by initiating an experiment. The findings reveal that tourists’ self-consciousness is awakened after being influenced by moral gaze, and their perception of social norms is improved. The mechanism of reputation management and normative activation prompts tourists to consciously modify their own behavior. Through this study, it is hoped that the findings will contribute to the formulation of ecological management policies in tourism destinations.
... For instance, eyespots on a computer, known as the "watching eyes effect" can enhance generosity in a dictator game (Haley & Fessler, 2005). This effect extends to real-world scenarios, fostering greater contributions for drinks and charities (Bateson et al., 2006;Powell et al., 2012), curbing littering in cafeterias (Ernst-Jones, Nettle, & Bateson,2012), deterring bicycle theft (Nettle et al., 2011) and promoting pedestrian adherence to traffic regulations (Manesi et al., 2016). Just like the watching eyes effect, taking an observer's perspective of self could enhance perceptions of social visibility. ...
Article
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Purpose This study examines the impact of first-person versus third-person mental visualizations of self on prosocial behavior, building on research that links perspective-taking to differences in moral judgments, agency, and self-awareness. A first-person perspective of self typically enhances feelings of agency, personal responsibility, and empathy, which has been hypothesized to lead to greater helping. However, a third-person perspective of self may heighten self-awareness, potentially leading to a greater focus on reputation management and consequently, helping. Methods In two preregistered experiments we test the impact of perspective taking of self on altruistic behavior. Experiment One (n = 599) manipulates generalized perspective taking of self during memory recall and assesses its effect on the amount of time individuals engage in a charitable activity. Experiment Two (n = 271) extends this investigation to explore how targeted perspective taking of self while visualizing a future volunteer activity influences intention to volunteer and actual volunteering. Results Across both experiments we found no evidence of an effect of perspective taking on altruistic behavior. Conclusion Our results contrast with previous research suggesting that differences in mental visualizations of self influence prosocial behaviors. These findings underscore the complexity of this research area and call for a deeper examination of the theoretical frameworks and methodology used in studies.
... The watching eyes effect in prosocial behavior is unstable and can be influenced by factors such as situational anonymity (Tane and Takezawa, 2011), cue presentation duration (Sparks and Barclay, 2013), power motivation (Wang and Dai, 2020), and task type (Baillon et al., 2013). Regarding the manipulation of cue presentation methods in studies on the watching eyes effect in prosocial behavior, the majority of eye cues are presented visually through images: human eye images (Bateson et al., 2006;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011), abstract eye images (Haley and Fessler, 2005;Mifune et al., 2010;Oda et al., 2011), robot resembling human eyes (Burnham and Hare, 2007), and even images featuring facial features composed of three dots (Rigdon et al., 2009;Xin et al., 2016). Other manipulations include the presence of real people in the environment (Lamba and Mace, 2010), or auditory interventions, such as wearing earmuffs to reduce the sound that implies social presence (Haley and Fessler, 2005). ...
Article
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The concept of the watching eyes effect suggests that the presence of eye or eye-like cues can influence individual altruistic behavior. However, few studies have investigated the effects of imagined eyes on altruistic behaviors and the psychological measures of dictators and recipients in the dictator game. This study used a 2 (Presentation Mode: Imagined/Visual) 2 (Cue Type: Eye/Flower) between-subject design and measured the effects of recipients' psychological variables and the communication texts between the dictator and the recipient. The results showed that there was a significant interaction between Presentation Mode and Cue Type. In the imagined condition, the dictator exhibited more altruistic behavior than in the visual condition. However, there was no significant difference in altruistic behavior between the Imagined Eye and Imagined Flower conditions. In addition, the study found that the Cue Type had a significant main effect on the recipients' satisfaction with the allocation outcome. Notably, in the Visual Flower condition, the dictator used more egoistic norm words when communicating with the recipient than other conditions. This study provides novel evidence on the effect of imagined social cues on individual behavior in the dictator game, and to some extent validates the robustness of the watching eyes effect under manipulation of higher-level verbal cognitive processes. At the same time, the study is the first to explore the impacts on recipients' psychological variables and the communication texts. These efforts offer new insights into the psychological and cognitive mechanisms underlying the watching eyes effect.
... [4,5]) that being gazed at with eyes in pictures increases prosocial behaviour [6]. For instance, pictures of eyes can increase generosity in dictatorial games [7], charitable giving in the field [8], as well as cooperative behaviour in the field setting [9]. The mind perception thus conveyed, leads people to help or hurt others or to praise and punish others in their lives. ...
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Will et al.'s (2021 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 118, e2106640118 (doi:10.1073/pnas.2106640118)) found the Medusa effect, which refers to the tendency that people evaluate a ‘person in picture' more mindful than a ‘person in picture of a picture'. The present study tried to directly replicate the Experiments 2 and 5 of Will et al.'s (2021), to examine the reliability, validity and generalization of the Medusa effect, as well as its effect on prosocial behaviour. We used the same stimuli and methodology as the original research, but recruited participants in Japan with a larger sample size (N = 1387 in total) as a registered report. In our two replication experiments, we again found that pictures with lower levels of abstraction (L1) were perceived to convey more mind and lead to higher levels of prosocial behaviour, successfully replicating the original findings. The results of the present study suggested the high reproducibility and generalizability of the Medusa effect. Pre-registered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/xj46z (date of in-principle acceptance: 9 February 2023)
... This effect can be evoked with images of eyes that are only minimally similar to actual observer's eyes. Evoking perceptions of being observed, such as through a picture of eyes on the wall, has been shown to reduce crime and littering, and to increase honesty, voting behavior, and charitable giving [30][31][32][33][34]. Likewise, visual stimuli with eyes increased hand hygiene in a public restroom [35] and in a perioperative setting [36]. ...
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Incivility in surgery is prevalent and negatively impacts effectiveness and staff well-being. The purpose of this study was to a) examine relationships between incivility, team dynamics, and well-being outcomes, and b) explore a low-cost intervention of ‘eye’ signage in operating theater areas to reduce incivility in surgical teams. A mixed methods design was used in an orthopedic hospital. Surveys of incivility, teamwork, and well-being were administered three months apart in a small private hospital. An intervention of signage with eyes was placed in the theater area after administration of the first survey, using a pretest-posttest design. Participants also responded to an open-ended question about suggestions for improvements at the end of the survey which was then thematically analyzed. At the individual level (n = 74), incivility was statistically significantly related to team dynamics which in turn was significantly related to burnout, stress, and job attitudes. At the aggregate level, reported incivility was statistically significantly lower after the ‘eye’ sign intervention. Thematic analysis identified core issues of management behaviors, employee appreciation, communication, and work practices. Incivility in surgical teams has significant detrimental associations with burnout, stress, and job attitudes, which occurs through its impact on decreased team dynamics and communication. A simple intervention that evokes perceptions of being observed, such as signage of eyes in theater areas, has the potential to decrease incivility at least in the short term, demonstrating that incivility is amenable to being modified. Additional research on targeted interventions to address incivility are needed to improve teamwork and staff well-being.
... Multiple studies have indeed shown that salient colours elicit rapid and involuntary attention shifts to the object, regardless of whether subjects had an internally generated (endogenous) motivation to orient their attention to that specific object [26]. Interventions in litter control, such as ex-ante campaigns reminding individuals of littering costs or highlighting the social norm or high fines that punish uncivil behaviour ex-post, might increase endogenous attention and trigger top-down visual search to find the closest bin [27,28]. Interventions aiming at increasing the salience of bins relative to the surroundings will, on the other hand, trigger automatic attentional capture to the bin. ...
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In an effort to inform interventions targeting littering behaviour, we estimate how much a change in trash-bag colour increases trash can visibility in Paris. To that end, we applied standard Signal Detection techniques to test how much changing trash-bag colour affects subjects’ trash can detection rates. In three pre-registered studies, we found that changing trash bag colour from grey to either red, green or blue considerably increases the perception of bins in British (tourist) and Parisian (resident) samples. We found that changing the bag colour from grey to blue increased visibility the most.
... Skulls can function as death primes, but may also prime a sense of being watched. Several social psychological studies demonstrate that even subtle images of eyes give people a sense of being watched, and that this stimulates pro-social behaviour (Baillon, Selim, and van Dolder, 2013;Bateson, Nettle, and Roberts, 2006;Ernest-Jones, Nettle, and Bateson, 2011;Haley and Fessler, 2005;Rigdon, Ishii, Watabe, and Kitayama, 2009). Levinas (1969, 66, 262) argued that it is the face of the other, and in particular their eyes, that inspires ethics in oneself. ...
Thesis
This work investigates what motivates environmental action through developing a case study on how ecological conscience forms in the ritual practices of a new religious movement. I conducted a two-year ethnographic study with a community of contemporary Heathens in eastern and southwestern Ontario to investigate how ritual practices are related to the formation of conscience in the group. I used participant observation and interviews to investigate how ritual is related to conscience formation, and how it can generate a sense of obligation to others, including nonhuman others. I draw on social psychology (especially terror management theory), cognitive science, anthropology, ritual studies, and philosophy to describe and interpret three ritual practices, each of which involve some sort of gift giving. First I discuss high sumbel, a ritual of sharing drinks and giving gifts, then Dísablót, an example of ancestor veneration in which offerings (a type of gift) are given to the dead, and finally the procession of Nerthus, in which offerings are made to a figure participants understand as a power of nature associated with a particular bioregion. I find that giving gifts and expressing thanks in ritual inspires a sense of gratitude and a desire to give in turn in participants. Among these Heathens this gratitude and felt sense of obligation extends beyond human relations to include the more than human world. When one gives a gift one develops an appreciation for what one has already received, and when ritual activities include things that make participants aware of their mortality, the values that come to mind during the activity can be operationalized. In this case, values of inclusion, gratitude, sharing, and generosity are reinforced through ritual practice and influence participants’ dispositions, attitudes, and habitual behaviours.
... Kevin Haley and Daniel Fessler (2005) found a positive effect of observability cues (stylized eyes) on generosity in economic games. Similar effects of watching images of eyes were recorded in real-world experiments involving donations to an "honesty box" (Bateson et al. 2006) and littering in a university cafeteria (Ernest-Jones et al. 2011; see also Kingstone et al. 2017 for a general discussion). Meanwhile, neither Cai Wei et al. nor Stefan Pfattheicher et al. found any significant relationship between presenting cues of being watched (stylized eyes) and cheating behavior in laboratory settings (Cai Wei et al. 2015;Pfattheicher et al. 2019). ...
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Costly signaling theory of religion has been proposed to explain the evolutionary adaptiveness of religion in general and, specifically, its prosocial effects, including the relative longevity of religious communes vis-à-vis their secular counterparts. This article focuses on two crucial aspects of this relationship: the features and functions of signals and the mechanism through which signaling translates into enhanced prosociality. It identifies some of the key factors of the costliness of behavior and distinguishes between religious and secular signals, arguing that only the latter serve to broadcast commitment. The role of religious signals, instead, might be to stimulate the supernatural watching (“Under His Eye”) mechanism: enhancing supernatural sanctions beliefs and providing a setting in which implicit prosocial responses are triggered. The relative absence of this mechanism in secular communities may explain their shorter life spans. A link is thus established between the costly signaling and supernatural punishment theories of religious behavior.
... Kevin Haley and Daniel Fessler (2005) found a positive effect of observability cues (stylized eyes) on generosity in economic games. Similar effects of watching images of eyes were recorded in real-world experiments involving donations to an "honesty box" (Bateson et al. 2006) and littering in a university cafeteria (Ernest-Jones et al. 2011; see also Kingstone et al. 2017 for a general discussion). Meanwhile, neither Cai Wei et al. nor Stefan Pfattheicher et al. found any significant relationship between presenting cues of being watched (stylized eyes) and cheating behavior in laboratory settings (Cai Wei et al. 2015;Pfattheicher et al. 2019). ...
Article
Full-text available
Costly signaling theory of religion has been proposed to explain the evolutionary adaptiveness of religion in general and, specifically, its prosocial effects, including the relative longevity of religious communes vis-à-vis their secular counterparts. This article focuses on two crucial aspects of this relationship: the features and functions of signals and the mechanism through which signaling translates into enhanced prosociality. It identifies some of the key factors of the costliness of behavior and distinguishes between religious and secular signals, arguing that only the latter serve to broadcast commitment. The role of religious signals, instead, might be to stimulate the supernatural watching ("Under His Eye") mechanism: enhancing supernatural sanctions beliefs and providing a setting in which implicit prosocial responses are triggered. The relative absence of this mechanism in secular communities may explain their shorter life spans. A link is thus established between the costly signaling and supernatural punishment theories of religious behavior. RELIGION has traditionally been associated with group cohesion and integrity (e.g., Durkheim 1995), however, more recent developments in the social sciences, informed by a renewed interest in biological determinants of human behavior, have produced theories that address this relationship more directly. For instance, in evolutionary religious studies, religion is treated as a product of natural selection (or a by-product of certain evolved cognitive traits), which proved adaptive, improving individual or group fitness (Wilson and Green 2012). Among the mechanisms potentially mediating this prosocial effect of religion is signaling, most often discussed in its "costly signaling" version. Adapted from evolutionary biology, this theory proposes that, by engaging in risky, burdensome, or otherwise costly behavior, individuals signal their
... For instance, it is well known that individuals adjust their behavior based on the presence of others. Specifically, humans behave differently, in particular more cooperatively depending on their awareness of being observed, for example, through a simple image of eyes on a computer screen in social dilemma situations [5][6][7][8]. Most human behaviors appeared to be ineluctably based on external and social circumstances that also determined and affected human basic needs [9,10]. ...
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People are known to adjust their behavior based on social information. Starting from 2004, social media rapidly became a new social arena for human interaction, and scholars widely studied the effect of likes on people’s psyche and behavior. However, likes are just one of the possible social feedbacks among many others on social media. Moreover, social feedback influence should be analyzed recognizing individual differences in people’s needs and desires for them. This work was aimed at developing and validating (internally and externally) a scale able to capture people’s perceived need for online social feedback (NfOSF) applicable to most social media platforms. Data coming from 1403 Italian participants were used for this purpose. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses appeared to support a two-factor structure for the NfOSF scale, while Pearson’s correlation confirmed the expected positive relations of NfOSF factors with Narcissism, Need to Belong, FOMO, and Social media reputation perception. Eventually, NfOSF scale reliability appeared optimal.
... This finding contradicts other studies that show that cooperative societies have a positive and significant impact on poverty reduction by creating jobs, empowering women, and stabilizing markets [20,30,35,62,69,79,93,109,115,128] & [47]. Other research has found that cooperative societies contribute insignificantly to food security and poverty reduction because of heterogeneous membership, organizational management, passive participation, lack of trust among members, equal dividend sharing regardless of the level of participation, and other issues [41]; Andrew, 2001; [46,65]. ...
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Background Food security is a critical issue and a top priority in the policies of developing countries. The objectives of this study were to analyze the status of rural food security, determine the factors affecting rural family food security, and identify the coping methods used by rural households in the study area. Methods A cross-sectional study design was used in the present study. The study was conducted from March to June 2021. Overall, 143 households from three rural Kebeles were chosen using a stratified random sampling technique. Both primary and secondary data were gathered. Descriptive statistics and economic regression models were used. To identify the factors that influence the food security of rural households, a binary logistic regression model was developed. Results Less than a third of the households (29.4%) were found to be food secure, while households (70.6%) were found to be food insecure. The estimated logistic model outcome on household food security confirmed the size of the family and drought occurrence affected negatively in 1% and 5% probability levels, respectively, while education, size of farm land, TLU, total annual cereal yields, on-farm income, off-farm income, use of agricultural input, and use of credits affect positively. Expect the use of credit (5%), all are statically significant at the 1% probability level. Withdrawing children from school (1st) and Beginning (2nd) food secure/insecure households, respectively, practices are the main coping methods used by the household. Conclusion According to the results of the model, approximately ten explanatory variables had a statistically significant relationship with household food security. Food insecure household heads are more familiar with the coping strategy than food secured. Households in the study area were relying on preferred foods to deal with food scarcity and starvation. The government agent should be households treated differently depending on the issue raised.
... Nudges have been used in almost every kind of human interaction to encourage one behaviour over another (Thaler, Sunstein, & Balz, 2013). Nudges include incrementally closer perpendicular lines on the road, which encourage drivers to slow down before they get to a sharp corner (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008), or a pair of eyes on the wall of an examination room, which increases honesty in a coffee shop or reduce littering (Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Bateson et al., 2013). By definition, a nudge is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people's behaviour in a predictable way, a key point being that the aspect must not forbid any option or significantly change their economic incentives (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). ...
Thesis
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Existing attempts to elucidate one's level of engagement with and attitude towards urban wildlife are primarily focused on a single species of flora or fauna and multiple species data are lacking. To achieve a more comprehensive understanding of perceptions of wildlife, I built and tested a measurement tool adopting both quantitative and qualitative methods: The Urban Wildlife Coexistence and Attitudes Scale (UWCAS). Two versions of the survey were administered to residents of the cities of Lethbridge, Calgary, and Red Deer (N= 1362). The results indicated that UWCAS (Version 2) is a psychometrically valid tool that elucidates the attitudes that residents hold toward wildlife. Overall, urban residents scored high on their willingness to coexist with and tolerate wild urban plants and animals. Further research could involve the collaboration with city planners and wildlife management groups to highlight species and habitats that could increase the health, happiness and well-being of residents.
... Signs have been shown to be effective deterrents for antisocial behaviour such as littering [14]; however, littering continues to be a problem within the collection despite the presence of signage. Research has shown that including a brief explanation as to why a behaviour is prohibited and the addition of 'watching eyes' images can increase the efficacy of signage but will not completely eliminate the antisocial behaviour [15] and may increase the incidence of other 'displacement' behaviours which may also be antisocial [16]. The presence of litter bins has been shown to decrease littering; however, the design and positioning of the litter bin as well as associated signage may have a significant impact on their use [17,18]. ...
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Plastic waste has become a hot topic in sustainability and conservation, helped in part by popular documentaries which have highlighted the issue to the general public. Much of the current literature focuses on the effect of microplastics in the marine environment, with very little information on macroplastic interactions or the terrestrial environment. In this report, the management of digit constriction due to macroplastic debris in a Verreaux’s eagle owl (Bubo lacteus) is presented, and the role of zoos in decreasing littering behaviour both within the collection and in the wider global context is discussed.
... We found that informing participants about nondeceptive environments leads to less dishonesty and that when deception is allowed and participants are aware of being observed, then honesty increases. Consequently, this echoes previous theoretical accounts (Ayal et al., 2015) and ndings (Zhong et al., 2010;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Nettle et al., 2012;Pfattheicher & Keller, 2015;Schild et al., 2019) that cues of being observed (i.e., anonymity or visibility; see Abeler et al., 2019) decrease cheating, which suggests that participants are more skeptical about their anonymity when experiencing experimental deception. [1] For a review on social norms as both psychological states and collective constructs and on how social norms inform action-oriented decision-making, see Legros & Cislaghi, 2020. ...
Preprint
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Psychologists, economists, and philosophers have long argued that in environments where deception is normative, moral behavior is harmed. In this article, we show that individuals making decisions within deceptive environments do not behave more dishonestly than in nondeceptive environments. We demonstrate the latter using an example of experimental deception within established institutions, such as laboratories and institutional review boards. Specifically, we first find meta-analytical evidence suggesting that experiencing deception at the laboratory level yields lower dishonesty. However, such evidence is correlational only. We therefore experimentally manipulated whether participants received information about their deception. Across three well-powered studies, we empirically demonstrate that deceptive environments do not affect downstream dishonest behavior. However, when participants were in a deceptive environment and aware of being observed, their dishonest behavior decreased. Our results show that the relationship between deception and dishonesty is more complicated than previous interpretations have suggested and expand the understanding how deception might affect moral behavior.
... The point to underline is that morality is an evolution that is tied to social opprobrium and approval. This might explain why people have been found to behave more ethically in laboratory experiments where they believe they are being watched (Burnham 2003;Burnham and Hare 2007;Ernest-Jones et al. 2011;Haley and Fessler 2005;Nettle et al. 2012), though it must be noted that this body of literature is heavily embroiled in psychology's replication crisis (Dear et al. 2019). This parallels the arguments of Lerner and Tetlock (2003, p. 433), who write: ...
Chapter
The study of subjective wellbeing has grown substantially in recent decades and is now seeking to influence public policy. The complexities of this new application have revealed weaknesses in the foundations of the field. Its operationalist epistemology was appropriate given its historical context, but undermines its ability to explain the mechanisms by which policy can improve subjective wellbeing. Likewise, the field’s deliberate avoidance of the evaluative element of “wellbeing”—what is “good for” somebody—leaves it poorly equipped to engage with the ethical and political complexities of policymaking. The present volume provides the theoretical depth that the field of subjective wellbeing is lacking by integrating psychological, philosophical, economic, and political perspectives on wellbeing. The end result is a rich and ethically sensitive theory of subjective wellbeing that can underpin scholarly research, inform therapy and self-help, and guide wellbeing public policy.
... Further, the current study extends the watching eye effect to the CMC, by using a watching eye icon as a visual cue for an imagined audience. Most studies of watching eye effects have been performed in offline environments (Bateson, Nettle, and Roberts 2006;Ernest-Jones, Nettle, and Bateson 2011;Ayal, Celse, and Hochman 2019) and, to the best of our knowledge, the present study is first to investigate it in online communication. The watching eye effect indicates that people can control their behaviour simply because of the presence of eye pictures (Haley and Fessler 2005), and a number of previous studies addressed that eyeshaped images could reduce ethical dissonance and enhance moral behaviours (Bateson, Nettle, and Roberts 2006;Dear, Dutton, and Fox 2019;Ayal, Celse, and Hochman 2019). ...
Article
The watching-eye effect proposes that others’ eyes cause people to behave in a prosocial manner. The current study tested this in the context of an online news website, by investigating whether a watching-eye icon influences users’ attention to themselves and expressions of their opinions in a comment section. In an online experiment, participants (N = 741) used an online news website in the presence (vs. absence) of a watching eye as a visual cue for an imagined audience, who reportedly presented their opinions in a comment section. Results showed that the watching eye did influence participants’ private and public self-awareness and the quality of their comments. Presence of the visual cues, compared to its absence, increased female participants’ self-awareness, specifically when others’ opinions revealed in the comment section were mixed or opposed to the news article topic. This increased private self-awareness was positively associated with the comment quality. These findings indicate the importance of social cues on interfaces in mitigating the negative consequences of anonymity in online environments.
... Although the results were identical for letters and faces in the previous study, we decided to keep it in the design and the analysis. Based on research in moral psychology (Bateson et al., 2006;Ernest-Jones et al., 2011;Haley & Fessler, 2005;Krátký et al., 2016), feelings of being monitored and a presence of agency cues increase moral behavior. We, therefore, predicted that loading WM with faces might generate more honest responses than loading WM with letters due to the presence of agency elicited by the face stimuli. ...
Article
Though human social interaction in general seems effortless at times, successful engagement in collaborative or exploitative social interaction requires the availability of cognitive resources. Research on Dual-Process suggests that two systems, the affective (non-reflective) and the cognitive (reflective), are responsible for different types of reasoning. Nevertheless, the evidence on which system leads to what type of behavioral outcome, in terms of prosociality, is at best contradicting and perplexing. In the present paper, we examined the role of the two systems, operationalized as working memory depletion, in prosocial decision-making. We hypothesize that the nature of the available cognitive resources could affect whether humans engage in collaborative or exploitative social interaction. Using Operation Span to manipulate the availability of working memory, we examined how taxing the cognitive system affects cooperation and cheating. In two experiments, we provide evidence that concurrent load, but not cumulative load is detrimental to cooperation, whereas neither concurrent nor cumulative load seems to affect cheating behavior. These findings are in contrast to several previous assumptions. We discuss limitations, possible explanations, and future directions.
... ,Burnham and Hare 2007, Ernest-Jones et al. 2011, Haley and Fessler 2005, Nettle et al. 2012, though it must be noted that this body of literature is heavily embroiled in psychology's replication crisis(Dear et al. 2019). This parallels the arguments ofLerner and Tetlock (2003, p. 433), who write: ...
Chapter
The study of subjective wellbeing has grown substantially in recent decades and is now seeking to influence public policy. The complexities of this new application have revealed weaknesses in the foundations of the field. Its operationalist epistemology was appropriate given its historical context, but undermines its ability to explain the mechanisms by which policy can improve subjective wellbeing. Likewise, the field’s deliberate avoidance of the evaluative element of “wellbeing”—what is “good for” somebody—leaves it poorly equipped to engage with the ethical and political complexities of policymaking. The present volume provides the theoretical depth that the field of subjective wellbeing is lacking by integrating psychological, philosophical, economic, and political perspectives on wellbeing. The end result is a rich and ethically sensitive theory of subjective wellbeing that can underpin scholarly research, inform therapy and self-help, and guide wellbeing public policy
... ,Burnham and Hare 2007, Ernest-Jones et al. 2011, Haley and Fessler 2005, Nettle et al. 2012, though it must be noted that this body of literature is heavily embroiled in psychology's replication crisis(Dear et al. 2019). This parallels the arguments ofLerner and Tetlock (2003, p. 433), who write: ...
Chapter
How do you measure a construct as complex as subjective wellbeing? The first part of this chapter reviews the many tools available for measuring each dimension of the construct, as well as the well-being profile—a new measure that holds some promise for capturing subjective wellbeing holistically in only fifteen questions. The second part of the chapter then explains why even fifteen questions is likely too long for many applications in policy and social science. Life satisfaction scales hold a great deal of promise as a unidimensional and sufficiently cardinal measure of subjective wellbeing for these applications. However, there are several concerns about these scales, notably inconsistent scale use across respondents or within respondents over time, that need to be investigated more thoroughly. The chapter provides a conceptual analysis of these concerns and uses them to differentiate adaptation, scale-norming, and reference point shifts.
Preprint
Reputation plays a major role in human societies, and it has been proposed as an explanation for the evolution of cooperation. While the majority of previous studies equates reputation with a transparent and complete history of players' past decisions, in real life, reputations are often ambiguous and opaque. Using web-based experiments, we explore the extent to which opaque reputation works in isolating defectors, with and without partner selection opportunities. Our results show that low reputation works as a signal of untrustworthiness, whereas medium or high reputation are not taken into account by participants for orienting their choices. We also find that reputation without partner selection does not promote cooperative behavior; that is, defectors do not turn into cooperators only for the sake of getting a positive reputation. Finally, in a third study, we find that, when reputation is pivotal to selection, then a substantial proportion of would-be-defectors turn into cooperators. Taken together, these results provide insights on the characteristics of reputation and on the way in which humans make use of it when selecting partners but also when knowing that they will be selected.
Article
Non-monetary incentives are increasingly being studied in encouraging energy conservation. In light of this, we conducted a natural field experiment in student dormitories to assess the effect of social recognition and goal setting on electricity saving and the intrinsic motivation to save energy. Using a difference-in-difference model, we found that goal setting reduced the dormitories’ electricity consumption by 15.93% on average compared to the control group. However, social recognition was not effective on average. In addition, the study found that both social recognition and goal setting, on average, did not crowd out or crowd in the intrinsic motivation to save electricity in dormitories. The heterogeneity analysis showed that dormitory characteristics affect the crowding effect on the intrinsic motivation.
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Some research suggests that moral behavior can be strongly influenced by trivial features of the environment of which we are completely unaware. Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists have argued that these findings undermine our commonsense notions of agency and responsibility, both of which emphasize the role of practical reasoning and conscious deliberation in action. We present the results of four vignette-based studies (N = 1,437) designed to investigate how people think about the metaphysical and moral implications of scientific findings that reveal our susceptibility to automaticity and situational influences. When presented with lightly fictionalized narratives about these findings, participants exhibit no tendency toward changing judgments of freedom and responsibility compared to control groups. This suggests that people seem unwilling to adopt skeptical attitudes about agency on the basis of these scientific findings.
Chapter
This paper presents three behavioral insights for researching and teaching sustainability at universities: In a behavioral field experiment at a North American university campus, individuals were found to engage in sustainability actions if facing social status loss prospects. In line with (Kahneman and Tversky 1979) prospect theory holding losses looming larger than gains, social status loss prospects appear as powerful motivating factors to boost sustainability. In a university collaboration, behavioral online and paper-pen campus survey studies showed that when individuals judge alternative choices, presenting alternatives concurrently improves decision-making outcomes for future orientation and intergenerational balance. The joint alternative presentation mode therefore can boost sustainability. The third study used academic laboratory experiments, in which students played an economic trust game followed by a common goods game. The repeated interaction in two standard economic games provided evidence for trust and reciprocity leading to individuals contributing more to common goals. Educating future leaders at universities in a climate of trust and reciprocity may thus help elicit future contributions to sustainable development. Combined these studies prove behavioral economics to offer powerful ways to foster a sustainable society and pursue the Sustainable Development Goals.
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Human behavior is influenced by the presence of others, which scientists also call ‘the audience effect’. The use of social control to produce more cooperative behaviors may positively influence road use and safety. This study uses an online questionnaire to test how eyes images affect the behavior of pedestrians when crossing a road. Different eyes images of men, women and a child with different facial expressions -neutral, friendly and angry- were presented to participants who were asked what they would feel by looking at these images before crossing a signalized road. Participants completed a questionnaire of 20 questions about pedestrian behaviors (PBQ). The questionnaire was received by 1,447 French participants, 610 of whom answered the entire questionnaire. Seventy-one percent of participants were women, and the mean age was 35 ± 14 years. Eye images give individuals the feeling they are being observed at 33%, feared at 5% and surprised at 26%, and thus seem to indicate mixed results about avoiding crossing at the red light. The expressions shown in the eyes are also an important factor: feelings of being observed increased by about 10-15% whilst feelings of being scared or inhibited increased by about 5% as the expression changed from neutral to friendly to angry. No link was found between the results of our questionnaire and those of the Pedestrian Behavior Questionnaire (PBQ). This study shows that the use of eye images could reduce illegal crossings by pedestrians, and is thus of key interest as a practical road safety tool. However, the effect is limited and how to increase this nudge effect needs further consideration.
Article
Previous research has shown that being observed can influence people's behaviors, including their eating habits. In this study, we predicted that men and women would exhibit different reactions to the perception of portion size of meat when being observed. By utilizing a camera to create a sense of being observed during the act of eating meat, we revealed that men in the observed condition reported perceiving the portion size of the meat they ate to be smaller and the eating amount to be less than was reported by those in the non-observed condition. However, women did not show any differences in their perceptions of the portion size of the meat they ate. These findings demonstrate that gender identity plays a role in how people perceive the meat they eat when they are aware of being observed. The discussion highlights the effect of being observed on meat consumption and illustrates the influence of masculine identity.
Article
Many collective action problems are inherently linked to honesty. By deciding to behave honestly, people contribute to solving the collective action problem. We use a laboratory experiment from two sites ( n = 331 and n = 319) to test whether honest preferences can drive cooperation and whether these preferences can be differentially activated by framing. Subjects participate in an asymmetric information variant of the public goods game in one of two treatments that vary only in their wording: The Contribution Frame uses a standard public good game framing, while in the Honesty Frame, words aimed to trigger honesty are used. We measure subjects' honesty in three ways using the (i) sender–receiver task, (ii) the die‐roll task, and (iii) self‐reported honesty levels and account for other‐regarding preferences and social norms to disentangle key alternative motives. We find that all three measures of honesty preferences robustly predict contributions, as do other‐regarding preferences and empirical expectations but not normative expectations. Additionally, honesty preferences predict contributions in the Honesty Frame but not in the Contribution Frame, although the difference between these is not consistently significant. Finally, we find no differences in average cooperation across the treatments.
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Various studies have shown that eye cues trigger a sense of being monitored, leading to behavioral changes, such as increases in prosocial behaviors, decreases in antisocial behaviors, stricter standards of moral judgment, and so on. However, studies have increasingly failed to replicate the watching eyes effect, and previous meta-analyses showed inconsistent results. One potential explanation for the inconsistency of the watching eyes effect is the existence of moderating variables; however, there is a lack of meta-analyses that include moderator analyses. The present study collected 91 articles with 216 effect sizes related to the watching eyes effect, and divided data types into measures of “proportion who did” (i.e., number of participants performing a specified behavior) and “degree of behavior” (i.e., the mean level of a specified behavior) to perform two respective meta-analyses. The results showed that eye cues significantly affected people’s behaviors, with a small but significant effect size (log odds ratio = 0.231, Hedges’ g = 0.117). The cultural type (i.e., Eastern vs. Western) had a marginally significant moderating effect on “degree of behavior”. Publication status, gender ratio, age, dependent variable behavior, stimulus type, eyes presentation time, and experiment type had no significant moderating effects. Finally, the mechanism, influencing factors, and future prospects of the watching eyes effect were discussed.
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Environments that require social interaction are complex, challenging and sometimes experienced as overwhelming by autistic people. However, all too often theories relating to social interaction processes are created, and interventions are proposed, on the basis of data collected from studies that do not involve genuine social encounters nor do they consider the perception of social presence to be a potentially influential factor. In this review, we begin by considering why face-to-face interaction research is important in this field. We then discuss how the perception of social agency and social presence can influence conclusions about social interaction processes. We then outline some insights gained from face-to-face interaction research conducted with both autistic and non-autistic people. We finish by considering the impact of social presence on cognitive processes more broadly, including theory of mind. Overall, we demonstrate that choice of stimuli in studies assessing social interaction processes has the potential to substantially alter conclusions drawn. Ecological validity matters and social presence, in particular, is a critical factor that fundamentally impacts social interaction processes in both autistic and non-autistic people. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction’.
Article
The tensions between democracy and justice have long preoccupied political theorists. Institutions that are procedurally democratic do not necessarily make substantively just decisions. Democratizing Global Justice shows that democracy and justice can be mutually reinforcing in global governance - a domain where both are conspicuously lacking - and indeed that global justice requires global democratization. This novel reconceptualization of the problematic relationship between global democracy and global justice emphasises the role of inclusive deliberative processes. These processes can empower the agents necessary to determine what justice should mean and how it should be implemented in any given context. Key agents include citizens and the global poor; and not just the states but also international organizations and advocacy groups active in global governance. The argument is informed by and applied to the decision process leading to adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, and climate governance inasmuch as it takes on questions of climate justice.
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The present research addresses tools that could help reduce littering in society. Four interventions were tested which, based on different processes, should reduce littering: monetary information, the depicted injunctive norm, watching eyes and a nature picture. To test these interventions, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving 440 community building's waste disposal areas (N = 71,155) was conducted in Vienna. Littering was assessed before the intervention, 24–48 h after, and again seven weeks after the intervention. Results show that the financial intervention (monetary information) hardly had any effect on littering whereas the norm-based intervention (depicted injunctive norm) led to more littering compared to the control and in particular, the nature picture. In contrast, the reputation-based intervention (watching eyes) and ecology-based intervention (nature picture) reduced littering over time by 4.7%. Thus, interventions based on implicit and soft appeals to reputation and ecology are more effective in fostering clean environments than classical interventions applying explicit information on finances and norms.
Chapter
Socially situated thought and behaviour are pervasive and vitally important in human society. The social brain has become a focus of study for researchers in the neurosciences, psychology, biology and other areas of behavioural science, and it is becoming increasingly clear that social behaviour is heavily dependent on shared representations. Any social activity, from a simple conversation to a well-drilled military exercise to an exquisitely perfected dance routine, involves information sharing between the brains of those involved. This volume comprises a collection of cutting-edge essays centred on the idea of shared representations, broadly defined. Featuring contributions from established world leaders in their fields and written in a simultaneously accessible and detailed style, this is an invaluable resource for established researchers and those who are new to the field.
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Models indicate that opportunities for reputation formation can play an important role in sustaining cooperation and prosocial behavior. Results from experimental economic games support this conclusion, as manipulating reputational opportunities affects prosocial behavior. Noting that some prosocial behavior remains even in anonymous noniterated games, some investigators argue that humans possess a propensity for prosociality independent of reputation management. However, decision-making processes often employ both explicit propositional knowledge and intuitive or affective judgments elicited by tacit cues. Manipulating game parameters alters explicit information employed in overt strategizing but leaves intact cues that may affect intuitive judgments relevant to reputation formation. To explore how subtle cues of observability impact prosocial behavior, we conducted five dictator games, manipulating both auditory cues of the presence of others (via the use of sound-deadening earmuffs) and visual cues (via the presentation of stylized eyespots). Although earmuffs appeared to reduce generosity, this effect was not significant. However, as predicted, eyespots substantially increased generosity, despite no differences in actual anonymity; when using a computer displaying eyespots, almost twice as many participants gave money to their partners compared with the controls. Investigations of prosocial behavior must consider both overt information about game parameters and subtle cues influencing intuitive judgments.
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This study evaluates the differential effectiveness of six different anti-litter procedures in two neighborhood theaters. The procedures used to encourage individuals in attendance to pick up litter and deposit it properly included: providing litterbags, providing litterbags with instructions to use them, providing extra trash cans, showing a special anti-litter film before the feature film, and providing incentives for the appropriate deposit of litter. In both theaters, the incentive procedures resulted in the removal of over 90% of all litter by the children in attendance, a figure far above that achieved by the other procedures investigated.
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Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself. Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our humanness as a given. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful "choice architecture" can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. Nudge offers a unique new take-from neither the left nor the right-on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike. This is one of the most engaging and provocative books to come along in many years. © 2008 by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. All rights reserved.
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A series of experiments examined the relationship of urbanism to helping. Six types of helping behaviors were studied in a cross-sample of 36 small, medium, and large cities across the United States. The relationship of helping to a series of statistics reflecting the demographic, social, environmental, and economic characteristics of these communities was then examined. The strongest and most consistent predictor of overall helping was population density. There were significant correlations between economic indicators and helping in 3 situations. Helping in some situations also tended to be negatively related to violent crime rates and to environmental problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Two experiments investigated effects of communication on behavior in an 8-person commons dilemma of group vs individual gain. A total of 593 persons recruited through newspaper ads served as either participants or observers. Ss made a single choice involving a substantial amount of money (possible outcomes ranging from nothing to $10.50). In Exp I, 4 communication conditions (no communication, irrelevant communication, relevant communication, and relevant communication plus roll call) were crossed with the possibility of losing money. Ss chose self-serving (defecting) or cooperating responses and predicted responses of other group members. Defection was significantly higher in the no-communication and irrelevant-communication conditions than in relevant-communication and relevant-communication plus roll call conditions. Loss had no effect on decisions. Defectors expected much more defection than did cooperators. Exp II replicated irrelevant communication and cooperation effects and compared predictions of participants with those of observers. Variance of participants' predictions was significantly greater than that of observers, indicating that participants' decisions were affecting their expectations about others' behavior. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that cooperation in a social dilemma context could be facilitated by inducing participants to emit social psychophysical cues, information in the perceptual array that affords meaningful and consequential social inferences. In particular, participants were asked to engage in mutual eye gaze, to touch one another gently, to communicate in a virtual chat room, or to tap out rhythms in synchrony. All but the last of these manipulations increased contributions to a public good in all-male but not all-female groups. These results suggest the inference systems that are engaged when individuals make decisions about whether or not to cooperate in a group context are responsive to relatively low level nonverbal behavioral cues.
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Both laboratory and field data suggest that people punish noncooperators even in one-shot interactions. Although such ‘‘altruistic punishment’’ may explain the high levels of cooperation in human societies, it creates an evolutionary puzzle: existing models suggest that altruistic cooperation among nonrelatives is evolutionarily stable only in small groups. Thus, applying such models to the evolution of altruistic punishment leads to the prediction that people will not incur costs to punish others to provide benefits to large groups of nonrelatives. However, here we show that an important asymmetry between altruistic cooperation and altruistic punishment allows altruistic punishment to evolve in populations engaged in one-time, anonymous interactions. This process allows both altruistic punishment and altruistic cooperation to be maintained even when groups are large and other parameter values approximate conditions that characterize cultural evolution in the small-scale societies in which humans lived for most of our prehistory. PNAS vol. 100, pgs. 3531-3535
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Because mutually beneficial cooperation may unravel unless most members of a group contribute, people often gang up on free-riders, punishing them when this is cost-effective in sustaining cooperation. In contrast, current models of the evolution of cooperation assume that punishment is uncoordinated and unconditional. These models have difficulty explaining the evolutionary emergence of punishment because rare unconditional punishers bear substantial costs and hence are eliminated. Moreover, in human behavioral experiments in which punishment is uncoordinated, the sum of costs to punishers and their targets often exceeds the benefits of the increased cooperation that results from the punishment of free-riders. As a result, cooperation sustained by punishment may actually reduce the average payoffs of group members in comparison with groups in which punishment of free-riders is not an option. Here, we present a model of coordinated punishment that is calibrated for ancestral human conditions and captures a further aspect of reality missing from both models and experiments: The total cost of punishing a free-rider declines as the number of punishers increases. We show that punishment can proliferate when rare, and when it does, it enhances group-average payoffs.
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Explaining unconditional cooperation, such as donations to charities or contributions to public goods, continues to present a problem. One possibility is that cooperation can pay through developing a reputation that makes one more likely to be chosen for a profitable cooperative partnership, a process termed competitive altruism (CA) or reputation-based partner choice. Here, we show, to our knowledge, for the first time, that investing in a cooperative reputation can bring net benefits through access to more cooperative partners. Participants played a public goods game (PGG) followed by an opportunity to select a partner for a second cooperative game. We found that those who gave more in the PGG were more often selected as desired partners and received more in the paired cooperative game. Reputational competition was even stronger when it was possible for participants to receive a higher payoff from partner choice. The benefits of being selected by a more cooperative partner outweighed the costs of cooperation in the reputation building phase. CA therefore provides an alternative to indirect reciprocity as an explanation for reputation-building behaviour. Furthermore, while indirect reciprocity depends upon individuals giving preference to those of good standing, CA can explain unconditional cooperation.
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In a laboratory experiment, we use a public goods game to examine the hypothesis that human subjects use an involuntary eye-detector mechanism for evaluating the level of privacy. Half of our subjects are “watched” by images of a robot presented on their computer screen. The robot—named Kismet and invented at MIT—is constructed from objects that are obviously not human with the exception of its eyes. In our experiment, Kismet produces a significant difference in behavior that is not consistent with existing economic models of preferences, either self- or other-regarding. Subjects who are “watched” by Kismet contribute 29% more to the public good than do subjects in the same setting without Kismet.
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Strong reciprocity is characterized by the willingness to altruistically reward cooperative acts and to altruistically punish norm-violating, defecting behaviours. Recent evidence suggests that subtle reputation cues, such as eyes staring at subjects during their choices, may enhance prosocial behaviour. Thus, in principle, strong reciprocity could also be affected by eye cues. We investigate the impact of eye cues on trustees' altruistic behaviour in a trust game and find zero effect. Neither the subjects who are classified as prosocial nor the subjects who are classified as selfish respond to these cues. In sharp contrast to the irrelevance of subtle reputation cues for strong reciprocity, we find a large effect of explicit, pecuniary reputation incentives on the trustees' prosociality. Trustees who can acquire a good reputation that benefits them in future interactions honour trust much more than trustees who cannot build a good reputation. These results cast doubt on hypotheses suggesting that strong reciprocity is easily malleable by implicit reputation cues not backed by explicit reputation incentives.
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Imagine that the neighborhood you are living in is covered with graffiti, litter, and unreturned shopping carts. Would this reality cause you to litter more, trespass, or even steal? A thesis known as the broken windows theory suggests that signs of disorderly and petty criminal behavior trigger more disorderly and petty criminal behavior, thus causing the behavior to spread. This may cause neighborhoods to decay and the quality of life of its inhabitants to deteriorate. For a city government, this may be a vital policy issue. But does disorder really spread in neighborhoods? So far there has not been strong empirical support, and it is not clear what constitutes disorder and what may make it spread. We generated hypotheses about the spread of disorder and tested them in six field experiments. We found that, when people observe that others violated a certain social norm or legitimate rule, they are more likely to violate other norms or rules, which causes disorder to spread.
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Using a mock injury involving arterial bleeding, we explored the impact of variables on two different decisions in the decision-making process leading to help. Expertise (Red Cross Training), ambiguity, and number of bystanders were manipulated in a 2 X 2 X 2 design. We observed the following responses: (a) nonhelp, (b) ineffective direct help, (c) indirect help, and (d) direct help. The decision to help or not was affected by ambiguity, sex, and the presence or absence of other bystanders. Greater ambiguity led to less help; women helped less than men; and fewer people helped when other bystanders were present. Expertise affected the decision leading to the type of help used but not the decision to help. Although training did not raise the intervention rate, it did dramatically change the effectiveness of the help used and could yield as many as 28 more saved lives out of 80 such incidents. The number of bystanders affected both the decision to help and the type of help used. Ineffective direct help occurred most frequently when the bystander was alone. The presence of other bystanders also affected the type of indirect help that was used.
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Darwinian evolution has to provide an explanation for cooperative behaviour. Theories of cooperation are based on kin selection (dependent on genetic relatedness), group selection and reciprocal altruism. The idea of reciprocal altruism usually involves direct reciprocity: repeated encounters between the same individuals allow for the return of an altruistic act by the recipient. Here we present a new theoretical framework, which is based on indirect reciprocity and does not require the same two individuals ever to meet again. Individual selection can nevertheless favour cooperative strategies directed towards recipients that have helped others in the past. Cooperation pays because it confers the image of a valuable community member to the cooperating individual. We present computer simulations and analytic models that specify the conditions required for evolutionary stability of indirect reciprocity. We show that the probability of knowing the 'image' of the recipient must exceed the cost-to-benefit ratio of the altruistic act. We propose that the emergence of indirect reciprocity was a decisive step for the evolution of human societies.
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Human cooperation is an evolutionary puzzle. Unlike other creatures, people frequently cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers, often in large groups, with people they will never meet again, and when reputation gains are small or absent. These patterns of cooperation cannot be explained by the nepotistic motives associated with the evolutionary theory of kin selection and the selfish motives associated with signalling theory or the theory of reciprocal altruism. Here we show experimentally that the altruistic punishment of defectors is a key motive for the explanation of cooperation. Altruistic punishment means that individuals punish, although the punishment is costly for them and yields no material gain. We show that cooperation flourishes if altruistic punishment is possible, and breaks down if it is ruled out. The evidence indicates that negative emotions towards defectors are the proximate mechanism behind altruistic punishment. These results suggest that future study of the evolution of human cooperation should include a strong focus on explaining altruistic punishment.
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Darwinian evolution can explain human cooperative behaviour among non-kin by either direct or indirect reciprocity. In the latter case one does not expect a return for an altruistic act from the recipient as with direct reciprocity, but from another member of the social group. However, the widespread human behaviour of donating to poor people outside the social group, for example, to charity organizations, that are unlikely to reciprocate indirectly and thus are equivalent to defectors in the game is still an evolutionary puzzle. Here we show experimentally that donations made in public to a well-known relief organization resulted both in increased income (that the donors received from the members of their group) and in enhanced political reputation (they were elected to represent the interests of their group). Donations may thus function as an honest signal for one's social reliability.
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We examined the effect of an image of a pair of eyes on contributions to an honesty box used to collect money for drinks in a university coffee room. People paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed rather than a control image. This finding provides the first evidence from a naturalistic setting of the importance of cues of being watched, and hence reputational concerns, on human cooperative behaviour.
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Evidence shows that real-effort investments can affect bilateral bargaining outcomes. This paper investigates whether similar investments can inhibit equilibrium convergence of experimental markets. In one treatment, sellers’ relative effort affects the allocation of production costs, but a random productivity shock ensures that the allocation is not necessarily equitable. In another treatment, sellers’ effort increases the buyers’ valuation of a good. We find that effort investments have a short-lived impact on trading behavior when sellers’ effort benefits buyers, but no effect when effort determines cost allocation. Efficiency rates are high and do not differ across treatments.
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A series of experiments examined the relationship of urbanism to helping. Six types of helping behaviors were studied in a cross-sample of 36 small, medium, and large cities across the United States. The relationship of helping to a series of statistics reflecting the demographic, social, environmental, and economic characteristics of these communities was then examined. The strongest and most consistent predictor of overall helping was population density. There were significant correlations between economic indicators and helping in three situations. Helping in some situations also tended to be negatively related to violent crime rates and to environmental problems.
Article
One hundred forty-five experimenters "accidentally" dropped a handful of pencils or coins on 1,497 occasions before a total of 4,813 bystanders in elevators in Columbus, Ohio; Seattle, Washington; and Atlanta, Georgia. In picking up the objects, females received more help than did males, males gave more help than did females, and these differences were greatly exaggerated in Atlanta. Both males and females were less likely to help as the number of people present increased, and the data were well fit by a mathematical model of "diffusion of responsibility." There was also a slight but significant tendency for subjects to imitate each other, as shown by an overrepresentation of cases where no one or almost everyone helped.
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This study investigates an example of human altruism which is neither kin-directed nor reciprocal: giving to a panhandler. Data were collected on the proportions of passers-by who gave to panhandlers in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Three hypotheses were tested, each predicting that passers-by should behave "selfishly," capitalizing on opportunities that, in an evolutionarily appropriate context, could increase mating success. Male passers-by, when alone, gave disproportionately to female panhandlers. Male passers-by, when in the company of a female partner, disproportionately avoided giving to female panhandlers. Male passers-by in the company of a female partner did not "show off" by giving disproportionately to male panhandlers.
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Data from various settings suggest that there is an upper limit of about four on the number of individuals who can interact in spontaneous conversation. This limit appears to be a consequence of the mechanisms of speech production and detection. There appear to be no differences between men and women in this respect, other than those introduced by women's lighter voices.
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Nearly 2000 persons and 1100 table occupancies were observed in two settings. The settings differed in that table littering in one was nearly twice that of the other. In both settings males littered more than females and littering was more likely at tables greater distance from littering containers. Importantly, the relationship between table littering and the variables of group size and group gender mix differed in the two settings, owing to the operation of variables specific to each setting. Tentative explanations were offered for the interactions between these variables and the setting. These results were seen as supportive of Stokols' view that theory building is best done with a contextual research strategy.
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Mounting evidence that cues of being watched can enhance cooperative behaviour questions the existence of ‘anonymous', one-shot, non-kin directed cooperation and the validity of using ‘anonymous' economic games to empirically measure such behaviour in humans. Here we investigate how sensitive people are to such cuing effects. We test whether people playing an ultimatum game can use explicit information about experimental anonymity to override any effects of cuing in a public context, when faced with both simultaneously. The aims of our study were to investigate whether, (1) individuals respond to experimentally imposed anonymity within a public context and (2) the presence of known others affects cooperative behaviour over and above merely the presence of others. We find that proposer offers did not vary with changes in context (i.e., there was no “eyes effect”) but did vary with the degree of actual anonymity and the specific presence of known others. Hence, we infer that people recognise when their decisions are anonymous or not and proposers respond to reputation concerns when they are not anonymous. Responder behaviour did not vary with changes in context, degree of actual anonymity or the specific presence of known others. Hence, responders do not respond to reputation concerns and use one uniform strategy, perhaps as long as the payoff structure remains constant. This latter finding may hint at selection in favour of strategies that uniformly ensure near-equal splits of resources in some environments, and thus manifest as strong fairness norms in a population.
Article
Giving to others is individually costly, yet generates benefits to the recipient. Such altruistic behavior has been well documented in experimental games between unrelated, anonymous individuals. Matters of social distance between giver and receiver, or between giver and a potential bystander, are also known to be relevant to giving behavior. This paper reports results of an experiment manipulating an extremely weak social cue in the dictator game. Prior to making their decision, we present dictators with a simple visual stimulus: either three dots in a “watching-eyes” configuration, or three dots in a neutral configuration. The watching-eyes configuration is suggestive of a schematic face – a stimuli that is known to weakly activate the fusiform face area of the brain. Our results demonstrate that such a weak social cue does increase giving behavior – even under a double-blind protocol – and this difference in behavior across treatments is entirely explained by differences in the dictator behavior of males.
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Litter behavior in a university cafeteria was studied. The research examined the effectiveness of various written behavioral prompts that urged patrons not to litter. Prompting resulted in a significant decrease in the litter. Of greater interest, positively worded prompts were more effective than negatively worded prompts. The specificity of the prompt, however, had no reliable effect. Several demographic variables were also examined. Persons in larger groups littered more than those in smaller groups, and males littered more than females. Also, prior to the introduction of the prompts, persons 25 years of age and older littered (nonsignificantly) more than younger persons. When prompts were in effect, however, this tendency was reversed, with older persons littering much less than younger persons. Finally, littering generally decreased as a function of the convenience of disposal facilities.
Article
To test the hypothesis that sensitivity to monitoring drives people to act altruistically toward members of their own community, two experiments investigated whether an eye-like painting promotes altruism toward in-group members, but not toward out-group members. Participants played the role of dictator in a dictator game with another participant (a recipient) who was from the minimal in-group or out-group. Participants knew if their recipient was an in-group member or an out-group member, but were informed that their recipient did not know the group membership of the proposer. In-group favoritism occurred only when participants were facing a computer desktop which displayed a painting of eyes, but did not occur in the absence of eyes. These findings demonstrate that the eye painting displayed on the participant's computer screen worked as a cue for monitoring, and thus enhanced the participant's altruistic behavior.
Article
The "tragedy of the commons," that is, the selfish exploitation of resources in the public domain, is a reason for many of our everyday social conflicts. However, humans are often more helpful to others than evolutionary theory would predict, unless indirect reciprocity takes place and is based on image scoring (which reflects the way an individual is viewed by a group), as recently shown by game theorists. We tested this idea under conditions that control for confounding factors. Donations were more frequent to receivers who had been generous to others in earlier interactions. This shows that image scoring promotes cooperative behavior in situations where direct reciprocity is unlikely.
Article
The problem of sustaining a public resource that everybody is free to overuse-the 'tragedy of the commons'-emerges in many social dilemmas, such as our inability to sustain the global climate. Public goods experiments, which are used to study this type of problem, usually confirm that the collective benefit will not be produced. Because individuals and countries often participate in several social games simultaneously, the interaction of these games may provide a sophisticated way by which to maintain the public resource. Indirect reciprocity, 'give and you shall receive', is built on reputation and can sustain a high level of cooperation, as shown by game theorists. Here we show, through alternating rounds of public goods and indirect reciprocity games, that the need to maintain reputation for indirect reciprocity maintains contributions to the public good at an unexpectedly high level. But if rounds of indirect reciprocation are not expected, then contributions to the public good drop quickly to zero. Alternating the games leads to higher profits for all players. As reputation may be a currency that is valid in many social games, our approach could be used to test social dilemmas for their solubility.
Article
Indirect reciprocity occurs when the cooperative behavior between two individuals is contingent on their previous behavior toward others. Previous theoretical analysis indicates that indirect reciprocity can evolve if individuals use an image-scoring strategy. In this paper, we show that, when errors are added, indirect reciprocity cannot be based on an image-scoring strategy. However, if individuals use a standing strategy, then cooperation through indirect reciprocity is evolutionarily stable. These two strategies differ with respect to the information to which they attend. While image-scoring strategies only need attend to the actions of others, standing strategies also require information about intent. We speculate that this difference may shed light on the evolvability of indirect reciprocity. Additionally, we show that systems of indirect reciprocity are highly sensitive to the availability of information. Finally, we present a model which shows that if indirect reciprocity were to evolve, selection should also favor trusting behavior in relations between strangers.
Article
Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effects of this uncertainty, a stochastic dynamic growth model with the public sector is examined. It is shown that deterministic excessive red tape and corruption deteriorate the growth potential through income redistribution and public sector inefficiencies. Most importantly, it is demonstrated that the increase in corruption via higher uncertainty exerts adverse effects on capital accumulation, thus leading to lower growth rates.
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The subjective value given to time, also known as the psychological interest rate, or the subjective price of time, is a core concept of the microeconomic choices. Individual decisions using a unique and constant subjective interest rate will refer to an exponential discounting function. However, many empirical and behavioural studies underline the idea of a non-flat term structure of subjective interest rates with a decreasing slope. Using an empirical test this paper aims at identifying in individual behaviours if agents see their psychological value of time decreasing or not. A sample of 243 individuals was questioned with regard to their time preference attitudes. We show that the subjective interest rates follow a negatively sloped term structure. It can be parameterized using two variables, one specifying the instantaneous time preference, the other characterizing the slope of the term structure. A trade-off law called “balancing pressure law” is identified between these two parameters. We show that the term structure of psychological rates depends strongly on gender, but appears not linked with life expectancy. In that sense, individual subjective time preference is not exposed to a tempus fugit effect. We also question the cross relation between risk aversion and time preference. On the theoretical ground, they stand as two different and independent dimensions of choices. However, empirically, both time preference attitude and slope seem directly influenced by the risk attitude.
Article
This paper evaluates a pilot program run by a company called OPOWER, previously known as Positive Energy, to mail home energy reports to residential utility consumers. The reports compare a household’s energy use to that of its neighbors and provide energy conservation tips. Using data from randomized natural field experiment at 80,000 treatment and control households in Minnesota, I estimate that the monthly program reduces energy consumption by 1.9 to 2.0 percent relative to baseline. In a treatment arm receiving reports each quarter, the effects decay in the months between letters and again increase upon receipt of the next letter. This suggests either that the energy conservation information is not useful across seasons or, perhaps more interestingly, that consumers’ motivation or attention is malleable and non-durable. I show that “profiling,” or using a statistical decision rule to target the program at households whose observable characteristics suggest larger treatment effects, could substantially improve cost effectiveness in future programs. The effects of this program provide additional evidence that non-price “nudges” can substantially affect consumer behavior.
Article
We can think of no question more fundamental to experimental economics than understanding whether, and under what circumstances, laboratory results generalize to naturally occurring environments. In this paper, we extend Levitt and List (2006) to the class of games in which financial payoffs and 'doing the right thing' are not necessarily in conflict. We argue that behaviour is crucially linked to not only the preferences of people, but also the properties of the situation. By doing so, we are able to provide a road map of the psychological and economic properties of people and situations that might interfere with generalizability of laboratory result from a broad class of games.
Engineering human cooperation-Does involuntary neural activation increase public goods contributions?
  • T C Burnham
  • B Hare
Burnham, T. C., & Hare, B. (2007). Engineering human cooperation-Does involuntary neural activation increase public goods contributions? Human Nature, 18, 88-108.
Donors to charity gain in both indirect reciprocity and political reputation
  • M Milinski
  • D Semmann
  • H J Krambeck
Milinski, M., Semmann, D., & Krambeck, H. J. (2002a). Donors to charity gain in both indirect reciprocity and political reputation. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences, 269, 881-883.