The Development of Prosociality: Evidence for a Negative Association between Age and Prosocial Value Orientation from a Representative Sample in Austria

Abstract

While the ontogeny of prosociality during infancy, childhood, and adolescence has received substantial attention over the last decades, little is known about how prosocial preferences develop beyond emerging adulthood. Recent evidence suggests that the previously observed positive association between age and prosocial preferences is less robust than assumed. This study reports results on the association between social preferences, age, gender, and education from an Austrian representative sample (N = 777, aged 16–94 years) in which incentivized social value orientations (SVO) were measured along with various other sociodemographic characteristics. The analyses confirm that men are less prosocial than women, however, mainly during emerging adulthood (16–25 years). At the same time, the decline of prosociality is stronger among women leading to a convergence of prosociality between men and women as they age. Overall, we find that a prosocial value orientation is negatively correlated with people’s age. We suspect that the susceptibility of peoples’ social preferences to the preferences of others in their social environment is a critical factor unifying these different observations in the development of prosociality. We hypothesize that the opposite associations between age and SVO observed in two previous studies using unincentivized measures of social preferences are explained in parts by an age-related change in social desirability, measurement inaccuracy (continuous vs. categorical), and cross-cultural differences promoting competitive preferences among emerging adults in Japan. Moreover, we find that political orientations towards right-wing populists are consistently associated with less prosocial preferences, while education seems to be positively associated with prosociality. Overall, our study highlights the importance of conducting representative studies using incentivized measurements across cultures.

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Article
The Development of Prosociality: Evidence for a Negative
Association between Age and Prosocial Value Orientation from
a Representative Sample in Austria
Alexander Ehlert 1, *, Robert Böhm 2,3 , Jürgen Fleiß 4, Heiko Rauhut 1, Robert Rybnicek 5and Fabian Winter 6


Citation: Ehlert, A.; Böhm, R.;
Fleiß, J.; Rauhut, H.; Rybnicek, R.;
Winter, F. The Development of
Prosociality: Evidence for a Negative
Association between Age and
Prosocial Value Orientation from a
Representative Sample in Austria.
Games 2021,12, 67. https://doi.org/
10.3390/g12030067
Academic Editors: Vincent Buskens,
Rense Corten, Wojtek Przepiorka,
Werner Raub and Ulrich Berger
Received: 15 March 2021
Accepted: 7 September 2021
Published: 15 September 2021
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
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iations.
Copyright: © 2021 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
1Institute of Sociology, University of Zurich, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland; rauhut@soziologie.uzh.ch
2Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, 1030 Vienna, Austria; robert.boehm@univie.ac.at
3Department of Psychology and Copenhagen Center for Social Data Science (SODAS), University of
Copenhagen, 1353 Copenhagen K, Denmark
4
Business Analytics and Data Science-Center, University of Graz, 8010 Graz, Austria; juergen.fleiss@uni-graz.at
5Department of Corporate Leadership and Entrepreneurship, University of Graz, 8010 Graz, Austria;
robert.rybnicek@uni-graz.at
6Max Planck Research Group “Mechanisms of Normative Change”, Max Planck Institute for Research on
Collective Goods, 53113 Bonn, Germany; winter@coll.mpg.de
*Correspondence: ehlert@soziologie.uzh.ch; Tel.: +41-44-635-2322
Abstract:
While the ontogeny of prosociality during infancy, childhood, and adolescence has received
substantial attention over the last decades, little is known about how prosocial preferences develop
beyond emerging adulthood. Recent evidence suggests that the previously observed positive as-
sociation between age and prosocial preferences is less robust than assumed. This study reports
results on the association between social preferences, age, gender, and education from an Austrian
representative sample (N = 777, aged 16–94 years) in which incentivized social value orientations
(SVO) were measured along with various other sociodemographic characteristics. The analyses
confirm that men are less prosocial than women, however, mainly during emerging adulthood (16–25
years). At the same time, the decline of prosociality is stronger among women leading to a conver-
gence of prosociality between men and women as they age. Overall, we find that a prosocial value
orientation is negatively correlated with people’s age. We suspect that the susceptibility of peoples’
social preferences to the preferences of others in their social environment is a critical factor unifying
these different observations in the development of prosociality. We hypothesize that the opposite
associations between age and SVO observed in two previous studies using unincentivized measures
of social preferences are explained in parts by an age-related change in social desirability, measure-
ment inaccuracy (continuous vs. categorical), and cross-cultural differences promoting competitive
preferences among emerging adults in Japan. Moreover, we find that political orientations towards
right-wing populists are consistently associated with less prosocial preferences, while education
seems to be positively associated with prosociality. Overall, our study highlights the importance of
conducting representative studies using incentivized measurements across cultures.
Keywords:
human altruism; ontogeny of prosociality; representative sample; incentivized field
experiments; age-related differences
1. Introduction
Although social preferences are important for cooperative behavior [
1
,
2
], studies
on the development of prosociality in general populations are widely underrepresented.
While most research on the development of prosociality has focused on the main stages
of human ontogeny (infancy, childhood, and adolescence) [
3
–
12
], just a few studies have
investigated how prosociality develops after reaching adolescence, and findings are incon-
clusive [
8
,
13
–
17
]. However, understanding how social preferences change with age and
Games 2021,12, 67. https://doi.org/10.3390/g12030067 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/games

Games 2021,12, 67 2 of 16
how they are associated with other socioeconomic characteristics is essential for philan-
thropic organizations, political interventions, and a better understating of how life courses,
society, and culture affect the human disposition to care for the welfare of others.
Studies on the ontogeny of prosociality typically find that with the development of
fairness preferences around the ages of three to five [
4
–
6
], prosocial tendencies tend to
increase from childhood into adolescence [
12
]. However, some studies find a decrease in
costly prosocial behavior and cross-cultural variation, especially during middle childhood
(age 6 to 12) and thereafter as children develop towards the behavior of same-culture
adults [
3
,
10
], while others find a decreasing relevance of fairness preferences as adolescents
become older [
7
,
8
]. In addition, gender-related differences [
10
] and peer influences [
11
] in
the development of prosociality during adolescence have been observed. However, apart
from several studies looking at the association between age and individuals’ philanthropical
activity [
18
–
22
], little is known about how prosociality and social preferences, in particular,
develop beyond emerging adulthood.
There is some evidence suggesting that prosocial preferences increase with age. In
their seminal work, Van Lange and colleagues [
13
] studied the development of social value
orientation (SVO) in a representative sample of Dutch adults (N = 1728, age range 15 to
94 years) using a series of nine non-incentivized decomposed games [
23
]. In each game,
respondents could choose between three fixed allocation pairs of points for themselves
and an imagined other person: an individualistic option (maximizing one’s own payoff),
a prosocial option (maximizing joint payoffs), and a competitive option (maximizing
the difference in payoffs). Based on the frequencies of prosocial, individualistic, and
competitive choices in these games, Van Lange and colleagues [
13
] classified respondents’
social value orientations into one of three categories (e.g., prosocial, individualistic, and
competitive orientations), which is why the measure is called Triple-Dominance Measure
(TDM). Based on these categories, they observed that the share of prosocial individuals
increases among older age groups. Matsumoto and colleagues [
14
] used in their panel study
among Japanese adults (N = 408, age range 20 to 59 years) three different (non-incentivized)
measurement techniques to assess participants’ SVO. For two of those (including the
TDM) they found no age-related increase in prosociality. However, for the most recently
developed measurement technique [
24
], which yields continuous scores of prosociality,
they found an age-related increase in prosociality.
Two further studies found that age is (mostly) unrelated to prosocial behavior when
it is costly. Gutiérrez-Roig and colleagues [
15
] show in their study (N = 221, age range
10 to 86 years
) conducted in Spain that peoples of different age categories (17–25 years,
26–35 years
,
36–45 years
, 46–55 years, 56–65 years) reveal similar levels of prosociality and
do not differ in the frequency they cooperate in an iterated four-person Prisoner’s Dilemma
(PD) among people of the same age category compared to the (mixed-age) control groups,
except for elderly groups (65+), which revealed higher levels cooperation.
1
Another study
that looked at the PD-like split or steal decisions in 284 episodes of the Britain television
show Golden Balls (N = 574, estimated age range 18 to 73 years) showed that age-related
increases in cooperation rates could not be found for women but only for men. Last but
not least, a third incentivized study looking at cooperation rates in repeated four-person
Voluntary Contribution Mechanisms (VCM) conducted by Carpenter and colleagues [
17
]
in the urban slums of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (N = 120), and Bangkok, Thailand
(N = 120), revealed completely conflicting results. While in Ho Chi Minh City, women
were more cooperative and age was positively related to contributions, men were more
cooperative in Bangkok and age (when restricted to linearity) was negatively associated
with contributions to the VCM.
We conclude that the evidence on the age-related development of prosociality and
social preferences beyond emerging adulthood is inconclusive. In particular, it appears that
non-incentivized studies tend to find a positive relationship between age and prosociality,
while the evidence from incentivized studies on costly prosocial behavior is far more
ambiguous. On the other hand, the incentivized studies typically tend to suffer from less

Games 2021,12, 67 3 of 16
representative convenience samples. To this end, we collect data from an incentivized quota-
representative sample of Austrian adults (N = 777, age range 16 to 94 years) to examine the
association between social value orientation, age, gender, and education. Our results show
that age is negatively correlated with prosocial preferences. More precisely, we find that
prosocial value orientations are particularly declining between emerging (
16–25 years
) and
young adulthood (26–35 years). Moreover, in line with previous philanthropic research, we
observe that after the age of 65 years, people become increasingly less prosocial. Substantial
differences between prosocial value orientations of men and women are only found during
emerging adulthood (i.e., female emerging adults are more prosocial than male emerging
adults). We also find that education is positively correlated with SVO, although this
association diminishes after including omitted variables. Moreover, we find that people
with voting preferences for right-wing populists are substantially less prosocially oriented.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Participants and Design
The sample is quota-representative for Austrian citizens over the age of 16 and con-
sisted of 777 adults who had been recruited to participate in an incentivized lab-in-the-field
study. The data were collected between November and December 2016, and the study was
carried out by the organization Norstat using an ISO 26362 certified online panel
2
as part of
a larger panel study [
25
]. There were 376 (48.4%) men and 401 (51.6%) women ranging from
16 to 94 years (the mean age was 47.04 years with a standard deviation of
16.25 years
) with
different levels of education. The highest attained education ranged between compulsory
school (13.3%), vocational training (42.2%), higher vocational track (16.6%), university track
schooling (Matura, 16.1%), and university or college degree (11.8%).
2.2. Procedure and Measures
This study assessed several sociodemographic characteristics, such as age, gender,
level of education (1 = compulsory school, 2 = vocational training, 3 = higher vocational
training track, 4 = university track schooling (Matura), and 5 = university or college degree),
size of the city the respondent lives in (1 = below 5000, 2 = 5000 to below 10,000, 3 = 10,000
to below 50,000, 4 = 50,000 to below 100,000, and 5 = 100,000 and more inhabitants),
immigration status (0 = Austrian citizenship by birth, or 1 = other citizenship before),
and political orientation
3
. During a follow-up data collection, the larger survey panel
also collected some information regarding respondents’ occupational status
4
and life
satisfaction (“All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these
days?” with a 10-item Likert-type scale response variable coded between 1 = “not at all” and
11 = “absolutely”
). However, these covariates are only available for the 660 (334 women,
16–94 years) respondents who also participated in the second wave of the main study two
weeks after our study was implemented (14.3% dropout). Table A1 in Appendix Bgives an
overview of the distribution of our variables and their operationalization.
SVO Slider Measure. At the beginning of the primary data collection, we included
the incentivized SVO Slider Measure [
24
], composed of six constant- and non-constant-
sum dictator game-like decisions. In each of these six decisions, respondents were asked
to choose one out of nine allocation pairs containing fixed payoffs for themselves and
an anonymous other participating in the study. Dependent on the chosen allocation
pairs, respondents’ distributional concern for others was represented by the SVO angle,
which can range continuously between
−
16.26 and 61.39, with higher scores indicating a
greater prosocial concern.
5
Respondents’ main social value orientation can be classified as
altruistic (SVO > 57.15), prosocial (22.45 < SVO < 57.15), individualistic (
−12.04 < SVO
), or
competitive (SVO <
−
12.04). The used Slider Measure has been found to show good internal
consistency and convergent validity with other established SVO measures, cooperation in
the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and Dictator Game giving [24,26,27].
The choices in the experiment were incentivized by means of a lottery as suggested
by the developers of the Slider Measure [
25
]: One out of five participants were randomly

Games 2021,12, 67 4 of 16
selected for payment (100 points = 3 Euro) of one randomly selected decision of the
SVO Slider Measure. If participants were selected, they were paid as either sender or
receiver based on one randomly selected decision of the sender. On average, participants
selected for payment received 2.25 Euro (min. = 0.45 Euro, max. = 3.00 Euro). In addition,
participants received a fixed remuneration of 1.00 (0.75) Euro for completing the initial
(follow-up) questionnaire. The Slider Measure took 3 min and 10 s to complete on average.
The translated instructions of the used Slider Measure can be found in Appendix A.
3. Results
Since we collected data from respondents with various educational levels, we screened
respondents using the Slider Measures transitivity test for consistency of preferences [
24
].
From the 777 (age 16 to 94; 401 women) participants who participated in the primary data
collection, 77 (age 16 to 83; 38 women) participants did not pass the SVO Slider Measures
transitivity test suggesting potential comprehension problems and were thus disregarded
in all further analyses.
6
All reported tests were two-sided unless otherwise mentioned and
could be replicated using the deposited script and data.
3.1. Gender and Prosociality
The average SVO angle of respondents was 24.77, which is comparable with a previ-
ous study conducted in Japan using the same measure with respondents aged between
19 and 59 years
[
14
] (24.77 vs. 23.87, t(df = 1168) = 1.00, p= 0.316). Table 1shows the social
value orientations separated by respondents’ gender. Women tended to have higher SVO
angles than men (26.34 vs. 23.09, t(698) = 2.82, p< 0.01); the prevalence of primary value
orientations also varied by gender (chi
2
(df = 3) = 9.58, p< 0.05). More precisely, we found
that the sampled women were more often prosocially oriented, while men were relatively
more frequent among altruists, individualists, and competitors (e.g., men were three times
more likely than women to be classified as competitors, although the overall prevalence of
competitors was relatively small across both groups; see Table 1).
Table 1.
Average Social Value Orientation (SVO) of women and men along with the percentage of
altruists, prosoicals, individualists, and competitors based on their primary social value motivation.
Gender
Women Men
Ave. SVO 26.34 23.09
Altruists 3.3 4.5
Prosocials 67.5 59.1
Individualists 27.5 31.5
Competitors 1.7 5
When regressing participants’ social value orientation by their age, gender, and ed-
ucation, the association between being male and prosocial value orientations remained
negative, although it was only marginally significant when adding further controls and
turned insignificant when looking at those who also participated in the larger panel’s
follow-up data collection. In further analyses on the development of social value orienta-
tion, we thus took potential gender-related differences into account.
3.2. Age and Prosociality
Concerning the development of SVO, we found that respondents’ age was negatively
correlated with their social value orientation (r =
−
0.12, p< 0.01). This observation is
fundamentally different from what two previous studies have found in the Netherlands
and Japan [
13
,
14
].
7
However, the Dutch study used a less fine-grained SVO categorization,
while the more recent study in Japan only considered respondents between the ages of
19 and 59 years. Since several studies of philanthropy research report that charitable

Games 2021,12, 67 5 of 16
giving declines at some point after the age of 65 [
18
,
21
,
28
] and our sample also included
respondents between the age of 16 and 19 as well as 59 to 94, therefore, it may be the
case that the difference in the correlation between SVO and age is due to the wide age
range in our study combined with potentially declining social preferences during late
adulthood. However, when we restricted our sample to respondents of the same age
range (
19–59 years
), the correlation between age and SVO remained significantly negative
(
r = −0.12
,p< 0.01), and thus fundamentally different from what has been observed
regarding the development of SVO among Japanese respondents.
Table 2summarizes the average SVO for the different age groups together with the
proportion of individuals’ most pronounced social value orientations. It can be seen that
participants were significantly more prosocial during emerging adulthood (16–25 years)
than during middle to late adulthood (35+; 28.74 vs. 23.64, t(578) = 2.63, p< 0.01). Young
adulthood (26–35 years) played a connecting role in which prosociality declined until
reaching a seemingly stable plateau during middle adulthood (36–65 years). Similar to the
above-mentioned observations on decreasing giving behavior, the SVO of elderly (65+)
dropped slightly, however, insignificantly different compared to those during in their late
middle adulthood (56–65 years; 22.81 vs. 24.39, t(247) = 0.813, p= 0.42).
Table 2.
Average Social Value Orientation (SVO) and percentage of altruists, prosocials, individualists,
and competitors for differing age groups and differing studies [11].
Ehlert et al.
(2020) Age Categories
11–15
Years 1
16–25
Years
26–35
Years
36–45
Years
46–55
Years
56–65
Years 65+
Ave. SVO 30.93 28.74 27.14 23.86 23.41 24.39 22.81
Altruists 0.7 5.5 2.5 2.5 5 3 5.3
Prosocials 79 64.4 66.7 59.7 58.3 71.1 60.5
Individualists 19.9 27.4 30 35.3 31.7 23 28.9
Competitors 0.4 2.7 0.8 2.5 5 3 5.3
1
Shown data calculated from [
11
], based on those 889 subjects who were below the age of 16 years during the
first wave.
The most notable difference between our and the study from Japan is that the high lev-
els of prosociality during emerging adulthood (16–25 years; 69.9% altruistic–prosocial
oriented) that we found in Austria were in harsh contrast to the substantially more
individualistic–competitive preferences observed among Japanese in the same age category
(68.1% competitive–individualistic oriented; SVO angle: 28.74 vs. 16.95, t(118) = 4.26,
p< 0.001
).
8
To verify whether we observed some artifact in our study, we compared our
results with another large-scale study conducted with Swiss school kids aged between
11–17 years
[
11
]. We found that Swiss adolescents revealed similar although slightly higher
levels of prosociality than Austrian emerging adults (30.89 vs. 28.74, t(1140) = 1.37,
p= 0.17
),
which supports the robustness of our results for the Western European context. Since the
youngest individual in our sample was sixteen years old, we used the data of [
11
] to
provide a more comprehensive overview on the development of SVO by adding the av-
erage SVO and proportion of main value orientations of Swiss adolescents between the
ages 11 and
15 years
to Table 2. The slightly higher level of prosociality among Swiss
adolescents in [
11
] also provides further suggestive evidence in favor of our observed trend
of a decreasing average level of prosociality during emerging, young, and early middle
adulthood (
16–45 years
), which as previously said contrasts with findings who reported
an increasing SVO with age [13,14].
Since the bivariate analyses revealed gender differences in SVO, we also tested for
differences in the development of prosociality of male and female Austrians. Figure 1
shows the average SVO for each age category separated by gender, indicating that the
difference between men’s and women’s SVO was particularly pronounced during emerging
adulthood (16–25 years; 18.78 vs. 32.5, t(71) = 4.07, p< 0.001), and then successively declined

Games 2021,12, 67 6 of 16
throughout young and early middle adulthood. For all other age groups in our sample,
the difference between men’s and women’s SVO was statistically indistinguishable (all
t(df
≥
112)
≤
1.05, all p> 0.29) and also insignificant in a joint test for all respondents
above the age of 35 (35+; 22.95 vs. 24.45, t(505) = 1.08, p= 0.28) and even above the age
of 25 (25+; 23.36 vs. 25.28, t(625) = 1.57, p= 0.12). Similar observations concerning the
pronounced difference between men and women during emerging adulthood followed by
a harmonization during young adulthood can be made with regard to the Japanese sample
reported in [
14
], although both sexes started from considerably lower SVO levels during
their emerging adulthood in Japan (see Figure A1 and Table A2 in the Appendix B). More
generally, this is in line with what has been observed by other studies looking at prosocial
behaviors [19,29,30].
Games 2021, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW 6 of 17
Since the bivariate analyses revealed gender differences in SVO, we also tested for
differences in the development of prosociality of male and female Austrians. Figure 1
shows the average SVO for each age category separated by gender, indicating that the
difference between men’s and women’s SVO was particularly pronounced during emerg-
ing adulthood (16–25 y; 18.78 vs. 32.5, t(71) = 4.07, p < 0.001), and then successively de-
clined throughout young and early middle adulthood. For all other age groups in our
sample, the difference between men’s and women’s SVO was statistically indistinguisha-
ble (all t(df ≥ 112) ≤ 1.05, all p > 0.29) and also insignificant in a joint test for all respondents
above the age of 35 (35+; 22.95 vs. 24.45, t(505) = 1.08, p = 0.28) and even above the age of
25 (25+; 23.36 vs. 25.28, t(625) = 1.57, p = 0.12). Similar observations concerning the pro-
nounced difference between men and women during emerging adulthood followed by a
harmonization during young adulthood can be made with regard to the Japanese sample
reported in [14], although both sexes started from considerably lower SVO levels during
their emerging adulthood in Japan (see Figure A1 and Table A2 in the SI Appendix B).
More generally, this is in line with what has been observed by other studies looking at
prosocial behaviors [19,29,30].
Figure 1. Average Social Value Orientation (SVO) of men and women in different age groups. Larger
SVO values indicate more altruistic-prosocial preferences. Insert shows the predicted SVO by age
for men and women from a multivariate polynomial regression with cubic splines and further con-
trol variables (see Table A3 in the SI Appendix B). Grey bars and shading show 95% CIs.
Table 3 reports the estimates from a multivariate regression framework in which we
controlled for various covariates simultaneously. We found that individuals age remained
negatively correlated with SVO, when controlling for respondents’ gender and education
(Model 1; b = −0.117, t(696) = 3.19, p < 0.01). The main effect of age on SVO remained neg-
ative and significantly different from zero when including additional control variables,
such as citizenship, city size, and political orientation (Model 3; b = −0.12, t(691) = 3.25, p <
0.01).
In Models 2 and 4, we also tested for gender differences in the association between
age and SVO. We found that the interaction between being male and age was positive and
marginally significant in the baseline models (b = 0.12, t(695) = 1.66, p < 0.1) as well as
when we included additional covariates, such as city size, immigration status, and politi-
cal orientation (Model 4; b = 0.12, t(690) = 1.69, p < 0.1). Thus, age was more negatively
related to the SVO of women than men. Figure 1’s insert shows that this effect was mainly
driven by women’s higher prosociality during emerging adulthood and a subsequent
stronger reduction in prosociality and by low-prosociality female elderly. While the posi-
tive interaction between being male and age was also found by a study that looked at the
split or steal decisions in the television show Golden Balls [16], it has to be acknowledged
that the latter observation is less robust due to the small number of respondents above the
Figure 1. Average Social Value Orientation (SVO) of men and women in different age groups. Larger SVO values indicate
more altruistic-prosocial preferences. Insert shows the predicted SVO by age for men and women from a multivariate
polynomial regression with cubic splines and further control variables (see Table A3 in the Appendix B). Grey bars and
shading show 95% CIs.
Table 3reports the estimates from a multivariate regression framework in which we
controlled for various covariates simultaneously. We found that individuals age remained
negatively correlated with SVO, when controlling for respondents’ gender and education
(Model 1; b =
−
0.117, t(696) = 3.19, p< 0.01). The main effect of age on SVO remained
negative and significantly different from zero when including additional control variables,
such as citizenship, city size, and political orientation (Model 3; b =
−
0.12, t(691) = 3.25,
p< 0.01).
In Models 2 and 4, we also tested for gender differences in the association between
age and SVO. We found that the interaction between being male and age was positive
and marginally significant in the baseline models (b = 0.12, t(695) = 1.66, p< 0.1) as
well as when we included additional covariates, such as city size, immigration status,
and political orientation (Model 4; b = 0.12, t(690) = 1.69, p< 0.1). Thus, age was more
negatively related to the SVO of women than men. Figure 1’s insert shows that this
effect was mainly driven by women’s higher prosociality during emerging adulthood and
a subsequent stronger reduction in prosociality and by low-prosociality female elderly.
While the positive interaction between being male and age was also found by a study
that looked at the split or steal decisions in the television show Golden Balls [
16
], it has
to be acknowledged that the latter observation is less robust due to the small number of
respondents above the age of 70, especially among females, also indicated by the increasing
confidence intervals in Figure 1. To test the robustness of our results, we re-ran the analyses
excluding respondents at the age of 70 or older; all the above-reported results remained
quantitatively identical. Thus, we found robust evidence that among Austrian individuals,

Games 2021,12, 67 7 of 16
more so for women, age was negatively correlated with prosociality as assessed via Social
Value Orientation (SVO).
Table 3.
Results from multivariate regression with individuals Social Value Orientation (SVO) as the dependent variable.
Follow-up models included only observations from respondents participating in the primary and follow-up data collection.
Covariates
Models
Follow-Up
M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7
Age 1−0.117 ** −0.172 *** −0.120 ** −0.176 *** −0.178 ** −0.115 ** −0.184 **
(0.037) (0.050) (0.037) (0.050) (0.056) (0.042) (0.057)
Male −2.331 * −2.420 * −2.167 †−2.256 †−2.014 −1.819 −2.023
(1.166) (1.166) (1.165) (1.165) (1.257) (1.257) (1.260)
Education 1.506 ** 1.466 ** 1.306 ** 1.270 ** 1.103 * 1.096 * 1.032 †
(0.472) (0.472) (0.478) (0.478) (0.519) (0.531) (0.531)
Male ×Age 10.120 †0.122 †0.146 †0.147 †
(0.073) (0.072) (0.081) (0.081)
City size 20.138 0.136 0.221 0.213 0.245
(0.349) (0.349) (0.376) (0.378) (0.378)
Immigrated 0.758 0.549 2.047 2.425 2.058
(3.608) (3.605) (3.939) (3.946) (3.944)
Political orientation 3:
(ref. planned voting for
independent candidate VdB)
Right-wing party voter −3.588 ** −3.556 ** −4.248 ** −4.208 ** −4.135 **
(1.332) (1.330) (1.436) (1.454) (1.452)
Undecided voter 0.609 0.761 −1.313 −1.600 −1.370
(1.847) (1.847) (2.017) (2.021) (2.021)
Non-voter −0.937 −0.926 −2.663 −2.623 −2.541
(1.977) (1.974) (2.148) (2.161) (2.157)
Unemployed −0.211 −0.269
(1.965) (1.961)
Life satisfaction 0.175 0.185
(0.249) (0.248)
Constant 21.819 *** 21.776 *** 23.369 *** 23.288 *** 24.042 *** 22.899 *** 22.728 ***
(1.550) (1.548) (2.052) (2.050) (2.240) (3.020) (3.016)
Obs. 700 700 700 700 591 591 591
R20.036 0.040 0.050 0.054 0.052 0.047 0.053
Adjusted R20.032 0.034 0.039 0.041 0.037 0.031 0.035
†
p< 0.1; * p< 0.05; ** p< 0.01; *** p< 0.001. Unstandardized regression coefficients with standard errors in parenthesis are reported.
1
The
age variable was centered around the full sample mean age of 47.05 years.
2
City sizes ranging from (1) below 5000 up to (5) 100,000
and more.
3
Individuals’ political orientation was measured by their planned runoff voting decision during the Austrian Presidential
Election in 2016 between N. Hofer (FPÖ; national-conservative right-wing party) and as liberal considered candidate A. Van der Bellen
(VdB; Independent).
3.3. Education, Political Orientation and Further Covariates and Prosociality
In Models 1 to 4, we also observed that education and political orientation were related
to individuals’ SVO. We found no evidence for differences in SVO dependent on where
individuals live (i.e., rather rural or urban areas) or their immigration status (i.e., whether
they hold Austrian citizenship by birth or not).
Concerning the effect of education, we found that respondents’ level of education
was positively associated with SVO (Model 4; b = 1.27, t(690) = 2.66, p< 0.01). This is
similar to the established relation of higher education with higher and more frequent
donations in the philanthropic literature. However, the mechanisms underlying these
effects are still puzzling. In several studies, it was shown that when controlling for other
factors (e.g., such as social trust, cognitive, or linguistic abilities), the effect of education
is reduced or diminishes (for a review, see [
20
]). To this end, we used the larger panel’s
follow-up data collection to test for further variables’ effect on SVO that were likely to be
correlated with education, such as employment status (chi
2
(4) = 41.24, p< 0.001) and life
satisfaction (r = 0.176, p< 0.001). Similar to what has been observed with charitable giving,
we found that when controlling for these additional covariates, the effect of education on
SVO was partially mitigated and remained only marginal significant among those who
also participated in the follow-up (Model 7; b = 1.03, t(579) = 1.94, p< 0.1).

Games 2021,12, 67 8 of 16
Concerning respondents’ political orientation, we found that individuals reported
to vote for the candidate of the national-conservative right-wing party during the 2016
Austrian presidential runoff elections were substantially less prosocially oriented than
those who reported voting for the independent but rather left-wing oriented candidate
(Model 4; b =
−
3.39, t(690) = 2.67, p< 0.01). This association was even stronger among
those who also participated in the follow-up and even when controlling for unemployment
and life satisfaction (Model 7; b = −4.14, t(579) = 2.85, p< 0.01).
4. Discussion
This study reports how different sociodemographic factors, in particular age, are
associated with social preferences among a quota-representative sample from Austria. We
found that (i) age was negatively correlated with prosociality, particularly among young
and elderly women compared to men of the same age, (ii) the different social value orienta-
tions that coexisted between emerging men and women (16–25 years) converged during
young adulthood (26–35 years) and became indistinguishable thereafter, (iii) education was
positively correlated with SVO, but this association was slightly reduced when controlling
for related covariates, such as employment status and life satisfaction, and (iv) political
orientations were associated with different SVOs, in particular voting in favor of right-wing
populists parties was negatively correlated with prosociality.
Our main finding on the development of prosociality (i.e., that age is negatively corre-
lated with prosocial preferences) partially contrasts previous findings from other large-scale
representative studies conducted in the Netherlands and Japan, which reported a positive
relationship between age and prosociality [
13
,
14
]. We would like to briefly discuss some of
the differences potentially driving these contrasting results. Concerning the (more compa-
rable and recent) Japanese study [
14
], we showed that one crucial difference with our study
lies in the more than doubled prevalence of individualistic–competitive preferences among
Japanese emerging adults (16–25 years). Recent data from Switzerland [
11
] confirmed that
our observation is comparable to other Western European countries. We hypothesize that
the institutionalized culture of competition in and around Japanese schools (as reported
in, e.g., [
31
,
32
]) is a possible major factor promoting more individualistic–competitive
preferences among young Japanese compared to Western European emerging adults. To-
gether with the lower maximum age in the Japanese study, after which we observed a
further decline in social preferences, it may at least partially explain the conflicting finding.
Nevertheless, our results raise the question of how strong culture influences the ontogeny
of prosociality. In this regard, we believe that our results illustrate the important role that
culture (and peer influences) can have on social norms and preferences, similar to what has
been observed in other field and lab studies [
3
,
11
,
33
,
34
], supporting the prediction of gene-
culture coevolution that population-level variations are linked to societal and demographic
variables. Our suggestive evidence on the cultural differences between Austria and Japan
affecting social preferences might thus inspire future research to study the differences
in the ontogeny of prosociality between countries and cultures (e.g., between Western
countries and other East Asian countries with similarly pronounced competitive schooling
environments as Japan, such as South Korea, China, Singapore, or Vietnam9).
Concerning the Dutch study [
13
], we found that although both studies share some sim-
ilarities (e.g., investigate large quota-representative sample from European countries), there
are several differences in the study design, measurement, time, and location the studies
had been conducted, which may explain the contrasting results. The Dutch study [
13
] used
the non-incentivized Triple-Dominance Measure (TDM), classifying respondents’ SVO
into three categories (i.e., prosocials, individualists, and competitors). The present study
used an incentivized version of the more recently developed SVO Slider Measure, which
measures SVO as a continuous construct with good convergent validity to TDM [
24
] while
overcoming some of TDMs limitations [
26
]. For us, the single most reasonable explanation
for the opposite associations between age and SVO lies in the different measurements
of SVO and age-related changes in social desirability. The used incentives in our study

Games 2021,12, 67 9 of 16
represent a crucial difference that links respondents’ decisions to actual consequences and
thus can mitigate social desirability by making it costly to appear prosocial. Age-related
changes in social desirability (i.e., older people were more prone to socially desirable
response biases in self-reports to appear more socially acceptable) is a consistent finding in
research on response biases [
35
–
37
], making it likely that part of the age-related positive
association measured in the Netherlands (and also Japan)
10
captures social desirability
preferences rather than prosocial preferences. At the same time, the accuracy and variation
of the measurements are different. The continuous measure of prosociality used in our
study allowed multivariate linear regressions to attribute even minor variations in SVO
more precisely to the different sociodemographic characteristics, which allowed us to also
identify sample-wide declines in SVO among prosocials themselves that would otherwise
have remained unnoticed by categorical classifications as they might not have been strong
enough to result in a change in the respondent’s classification. With respect to time, it is
possible that in the more than two decades in-between the two studies, people’s lives and
perspectives changed by increasing globalization, income, and wealth inequality [
38
,
39
].
Relatedly, country-specific differences, such as the comparable higher economic insecu-
rity among older people in Austria (i.e., higher at-risk-of-poverty rates and inequality
among older people [
40
]), may be one additional factor partially explaining the different
developments of SVO in the Netherlands versus Austria.
Our results contribute to the overall literature on the development of prosociality
in general and social value orientation in particular. Supported by recent data from
Switzerland, we found a consistent decline during and between emerging and young
adulthood together with the harmonization of social preferences between men and women.
A phase of relative stability in SVO during people’s professional life, followed by increasing
volatility in SVO after the age of 65. We suspect that the susceptibility of peoples’ social
preferences to the preferences of others in their social environment observed in [
11
] is
a critical factor unifying these different observations in the development of prosociality
(see Figure 1’s insert). During people’s childhood, boys and girls develop different social
value orientations, either by nature or nurture (see [
12
] for a review). Driven by the
large proportion of same-sex friendships (e.g., [
41
,
42
]), these differences become more
pronounced during childhood and early adolescence [
12
]. With the end of school education,
gender segregation declines [
43
], and so SVO harmonizes between genders. Moreover,
emerging adults move out and become more independent from their parents and thus
less susceptible to the intergenerational (kin)-altruism characterizing the parent–children
relationship [
44
]. As people begin their professional lives by entering the labor market,
the increased interaction with people of different ages and gender further harmonizes
SVO also with respect to age-related differences. After the end of their professional life,
varying economic circumstances combined with increasing marginalization and isolation
of poorer elderly [
45
] lead to an increased SVO variation. This effect affects women over-
proportionally, as they tend to be more negatively affected by the costs of childcare on their
professional lives and, thus, face more often financial hardships during late adulthood [
46
].
Cross-cultural differences in the observations on whether SVO is increasing or decreasing
with age could be explained by cross-cultural differences in institutions promoting rather
prosocial or competitive preferences during childhood and adolescence.
Our study may also help to unify the literature with regard to gender-related differ-
ences in prosocial behavior. Our results showed that the prosociality of men and women
became indistinguishable somewhat after the age of 25. The conflicting findings that have
been reported with respect to gender differences can partially be attributed to the sampled
populations, so that studies relying on younger respondents’ pools, such as children, ado-
lescents, or undergraduate students (e.g., [
11
,
47
,
48
]), tended to find a gender difference in
prosocial behavior, while studies with older respondents groups did not (e.g., [
13
,
15
,
49
]).
Researchers interested in gender differences should therefore be cautious selecting and
interpreting their results with respect to the age of the sampled population.

Games 2021,12, 67 10 of 16
We should acknowledge several limitations of the present research. First, while the
SVO Slider Measure has the advantage of representing SVO on a continuous scale and
allowing for transitivity tests of preferences for screening unreasonable respondents, it
also comes with some disadvantages that need to be mentioned. The primary items
of the SVO Slider Measure, which were used in the present study, cannot adequately
differentiate between efficiency and inequality averse motives (i.e., both are classified as
prosocial and lead to similar SVO angles). Previous studies, however, have shown that
women are more inequality averse oriented than men, while men more often follow rules
of efficiency (see [
50
] for a review on the topic). Considering the insignificant but strong
association we found between gender and SVO, we thus cannot refute that there may
be differences in efficiency, inequality aversion, or maximin preferences or differences in
their development with respect to gender. Furthermore, considering the different prosocial
preferences observed among male and female emerging adults, this may be an exciting
avenue for researchers interested in gender differences. Moreover, although the used Slider
Measure has been found to show good internal consistency and convergent validity with
other established SVO measures, cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and Dictator
Game giving, it only has a weak association with prosocial self-reports [
24
,
26
,
27
]. Second,
although our study combined with the larger main study [
25
] allowed us to measure
SVO and many sociodemographic characteristics in detail, the data were not necessarily
comprehensive, since the larger study was considering the 2016 presidential elections in
Austria, the sample included only individuals eligible to vote in Austria (i.e., holding
the Austrian citizenship) and neglected people without Austrian citizenship. Moreover,
the collected covariates were limited, and we may have missed some omitted variables
especially regarding the relationship between education and cognitive abilities. Lastly,
although this study used a quota-representative sample with a large age range, which is
superior to most cross-sectional convenience samples, the associations between age and
prosociality remain correlational and a longitudinal design from infancy to late adulthood
would clearly be preferred but at the same time also incredibly difficult to obtain.
Author Contributions:
A.E., R.B., J.F., H.R., R.R. and F.W. designed research; A.E., R.B., J.F., H.R.,
R.R. and F.W. performed research; A.E., R.B., J.F., H.R., R.R. and F.W. analyzed data; A.E., R.B., J.F.,
H.R., R.R. and F.W. wrote the paper. A.E. is the first author, the remaining authors contributed
equally and are ordered alphabetically. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of
the manuscript.
Funding:
Funding from the Excellence Initiative (ZUK II) of the German Research Foundation (DFG)
to R.B. and by the Swiss National Science Foundation Grants BSSGIO
\
_155981 and 10001A_176333/1
to H.R. is gratefully acknowledged.
Institutional Review Board Statement:
Ethical review and approval were waived for this study, due
to the use of anonymized data previously published in [25].
Informed Consent Statement:
Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.
Data Availability Statement:
All the data and code used in this article have been deposited in
the Open Science Framework and can be accessed at https://osf.io/87bmx/. The used data
from
[11,14,25]
can be accessed via https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158671.s001,https://osf.
io/2kefc/, and https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002721994080 (accessed on 1 July 2021).
Conflicts of Interest:
The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design
of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or
in the decision to publish the results.
Appendix A. Experimental Instructions
Appendix A.1. Translated Instructions of the SVO Slider Measure
In the first part, you can earn money by distributing money (points) between yourself
and another randomly selected participant of this survey. You do not know this other

Games 2021,12, 67 11 of 16
person, this other person cannot influence your payoff, and you will remain mutually
anonymous. All your answers are confidential.
Games 2021, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW 11 of 17
Data Availability Statement: All the data and code used in this article have been deposited in the
Open Science Framework and can be accessed at https://osf.io/87bmx/. The used data from [11,14,25]
can be accessed via https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158671.s001, https://osf.io/2kefc/, and
https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002721994080 (accessed on 01 July 2021).
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the
design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manu-
script, or in the decision to publish the results.
Appendix A. Experimental Instructions
Appendix A.1. Translated Instructions of the SVO Slider Measure
In the first part, you can earn money by distributing money (points) between yourself
and another randomly selected participant of this survey. You do not know this other
person, this other person cannot influence your payoff, and you will remain mutually
anonymous. All your answers are confidential.
Example for a distribution decision:
In this case, you would have allocated 50 points to yourself and 40 points to the anon-
ymous other person. As you can see, your decisions influence both the payoff you receive
and also the payoff that the other person receives.
Every fifth participant of this survey will be randomly drawn to be paid according to
one decision. If you are drawn for payment, one of two cases can occur:
• You and the other person are paid based on how you allocated points to yourself and
the other person.
• Or you yourself are the “other person” and are paid according to the points that yet
another participant allocated to you.
You will receive your payment with an exchange rate of 100 points = 3 Euro by opin-
ion people approximately two weeks after the study is completed in addition to the flat
fee.
Please indicate for each of the following six distribution decisions which distribution
you prefer most. There are no “right” or “wrong” answers.
Please click on “Continue” to start. If you use a smartphone, please make sure that
the questions are displayed like in the example above.
Example for a distribution decision:
In this case, you would have allocated 50 points to yourself and 40 points to the
anonymous other person. As you can see, your decisions influence both the payoff you
receive and also the payoff that the other person receives.
Every fifth participant of this survey will be randomly drawn to be paid according to
one decision. If you are drawn for payment, one of two cases can occur:
•
You and the other person are paid based on how you allocated points to yourself and
the other person.
•
Or you yourself are the “other person” and are paid according to the points that yet
another participant allocated to you.
You will receive your payment with an exchange rate of 100 points = 3 Euro by opinion
people approximately two weeks after the study is completed in addition to the flat fee.
Please indicate for each of the following six distribution decisions which distribution
you prefer most. There are no “right” or “wrong” answers.
Please click on “Continue” to start. If you use a smartphone, please make sure that
the questions are displayed like in the example above.
Appendix A.2. Allocation Pairs Used in the SVO Slider Measure Task
Games 2021, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW 12 of 17
Appendix A.2. Allocation Pairs Used in the SVO Slider Measure Task

Games 2021,12, 67 12 of 16
Appendix B. Supporting Figures and Tables
Appendix B.1. Supporting Figures
Games 2021, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW 13 of 17
Appendix B. Supporting Figures and Tables
Appendix B.1. Supporting Figures
Figure A1. Average Social Value Orientation (SVO) of men and women in different age groups
from Austria (solid lines) and Japan ([14]; dotted lines). Higher SVO scores indicate more altruis-
tic-prosocial preferences.
Appendix B.2. Supporting tables
Table A1. Description of the sample.
Variable N Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
SVO angle 777 24.23 15.1 −16.26 61.39
Age 777 47.04 16.25 16 94
Male 777 0.484 0.5 0 1
Education 777 2.71 1.27 1 5
Compulsory school 103
Vocational training 328
Higher vocational training track 129
University track (Matura) 125
University/college 92
City size 777 3.00 1.66 1 5
Below 5000 229
5000 to below 10,000 113
10,000 to below 50,000 124
50,000 to below 100,000 49
100,000 or more 262
Immigrated 777 0.03 0.177 0 1
Political orientation 777
Hofer 321
Van der Bellen 272
Undecided 103
Non-voters 81
Unemployed 660 0.126 0.332 0 1
Life satisfaction 660 7.65 2.608 1 11
16−25y 26−35y 36−45y 46−55y 56−65y over 65y
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Social Value Orientation (SVO)
Age categories
Women
Men
Women (Japan)
Men (Japan)
Figure A1.
Average Social Value Orientation (SVO) of men and women in different age groups
from Austria (solid lines) and Japan ([
14
]; dotted lines). Higher SVO scores indicate more altruistic-
prosocial preferences.
Appendix B.2. Supporting tables
Table A1. Description of the sample.
Variable N Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
SVO angle 777 24.23 15.1 −16.26 61.39
Age 777 47.04 16.25 16 94
Male 777 0.484 0.5 0 1
Education 777 2.71 1.27 1 5
Compulsory school 103
Vocational training 328
Higher vocational training track
129
University track (Matura) 125
University/college 92
City size 777 3.00 1.66 1 5
Below 5000 229
5000 to below 10,000 113
10,000 to below 50,000 124
50,000 to below 100,000 49
100,000 or more 262
Immigrated 777 0.03 0.177 0 1
Political orientation 777
Hofer 321
Van der Bellen 272
Undecided 103
Non-voters 81
Unemployed 660 0.126 0.332 0 1
Life satisfaction 660 7.65 2.608 1 11

Games 2021,12, 67 13 of 16
Table A2.
Average Social Value Orientation (SVO) and percentage of altruists, prosoicals, individu-
alists, and competitors for differing age groups in Japan calculated from data reported in [
14
] with
respondents between the age of 19 and 59.
Age Categories
16–25
Years
26–35
Years
36–45
Years
46–55
Years
56–65
Years 65 Years+
Ave. SVO 16.94 22.43 25.04 24.69 30 -1
Altruists 2.1 0.9 0.8 1.3 0 -1
Prosocials 29.8 51.8 60.8 62.4 79.4 -1
Individualists 66 46.4 37.7 36.2 17.6 -1
Competitors 2.1 0.9 0.8 0 2.9 -1
1No data reported for respondents above the age of 59 in [14].
Table A3. Effect sizes of the multivariate regression model with cubic splines used to predict men’s
and women’s SVO development shown in Figure 1’s insert.
Covariates
Age 1−0.042
(0.112)
Male −0.151
(1.658)
Education 1.336
(0.488)
Male ×Age 1−0.065
(0.144)
Age 1×Age 10.004
(0.004)
Age 1×Age 1×Age 1−0.0002
(0.0002)
City size 20.136
(0.349)
Immigrated 0.378
(3.620)
Political orientation 3:
(ref. planned voting for independent
candidate VdB)
Right-wing party voter −3.400
(1.358)
Undecided voter 0.822
(1.847)
Non-voter −0.966
(1.981)
Male ×Age 1×Age 1−0.008
(0.005)
Male ×Age 1×Age 1×Age 10.0004
(0.0003)
Constant 21.997
(2.286)
Obs. 700
R20.061
Adjusted R20.043
Unstandardized regression coefficients with standard errors in parenthesis are reported.
1
The age variable was
centered around the full sample mean age of 47.05 years.
2
City sizes ranging from (1) below 5000 up to (5) 100,000
and more.
3
Individuals political orientation was measured by their planned runoff voting decision during the
Austrian Presidential Election in 2016 between N. Hofer (FPÖ; national-conservative right-wing party) and as
liberal considered candidate A. Van der Bellen (VdB; Independent).

Games 2021,12, 67 14 of 16
Notes
1
The age category 10–16 years, which was also sampled during a Board Games Fair, revealed significantly lower cooperation rates;
however, the authors could not replicate the effect among 12–13 years old young teenagers sampled at a local school.
2
Further information on the panel quality, including offline recruitment measures, is available under https://norstatgroup.com/
offering/online-data-collection (accessed on 5 March 2021).
3
The study was conducted during the 2016 presidential elections in Austria. Respondents were asked to indicate their voting
preferences between the rather left-wing liberal candidate A. van der Bellen (independent; formerly associated with the
Austrian green party) and the right-wing nationalistic candidate N. Hofer (FPÖ; national-conservative right-wing party). Voting
preferences could be indicated as undecided, in favor of either one of the two candidates, or by saying that they are not planning
to vote.
4
The variable was coded 0 = if respondents indicated that they had some form of a working contract (full-time, part-time,
marginally employed, vocational training or on temporal leave), were self-employed, or in pension, and 1 = otherwise.
5
The tangent of the SVO angle can also be interpreted as the weight an agent assigns to the payoff of an anonymous other person
under the given conditions of the Slider Measures allocation pairs.
6
Participants with intransitive choices in the six SVO slider tasks revealed significantly lower and less volatile SVO measurements
suggesting more random response patterns, but other than that did not significantly differ with respect to age, sex, education,
and response time (all t(775) ≥1.72, all p≥0.08).
7
It has to be noted that there is also one more study using the SVO slider measure, which reports no age effects [
49
]. However, it
has to be acknowledged that their sample of 63 adults was relatively small and narrow with respect to age (the reported mean
age was 31.92 with a standard deviation of 1.01 years) and therefore somewhat less informative for the age-related development
of prosociality.
8
The average SVO angle and percentage of altruists, prosocials, individualists, and competitors for the different age groups in
Japan calculated from data reported in [14] can be found in Table A1 in the Appendix B.
9
Further suggestive evidence in this direction has been reported by Carpenter and colleagues [
17
]. They found a positive
age-related effect on public good contributions in Vietnam (similar to Japan) but not in Thailand. Although the comparison is not
reported in the paper, it might be that Vietnamese emerging adults, similar to Japanese emerging adults, reveal lower levels of
prosociality than Thai emerging adults, likewise similar to Austrian emerging adults. Such differences could, as we suggest, be
linked to cross-cultural differences promoting competitiveness during childhood and adolescence.
10
The same argument regarding the possible confounding age-related effect of social desirability applies to the study from Japan
since their used SVO Slider Measure was also non-incentivized.
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