Naughty with Nice
Financial shame spirals: How shame intensifies financial hardship
Joe Gladstone et al.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, November 2021, Pages 42-56
Abstract:
Financial hardship is an established source of shame. This research explores whether shame is also a driver and exacerbator of financial hardship. Six experimental, archival, and correlational studies (N = 9,110) — including data from customer bank account histories and several longitudinal surveys that allow for participant fixed effects and identical twin comparisons — provide evidence for a vicious cycle between shame and financial hardship: Shame induces financial withdrawal, which increases the probability of counterproductive financial decisions that only deepen one’s financial hardship. Consistent with this model, shame was a stronger driver of financial hardship than the related emotion of guilt because shame increases withdrawal behaviors more than guilt. We also found that a theoretically motivated intervention — affirming acts of kindness — can break this cycle by reducing the link between financial shame and financial disengagement. This research suggests that shame helps set a poverty trap by creating a self-reinforcing cycle of financial hardship.
Sacrificing heroes or suffering victims? Investigating third parties’ reactions to divergent social accounts of essential employees in the COVID-19 pandemic
Zhenyu Yuan et al.
Journal of Applied Psychology, October 2021, Pages 1435-1447
Abstract:
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on globally, essential employees are widely recognized as heroes working on the frontlines confronting the virus and serving others. At the same time, stories abound whereby these essential employees are not provided adequate support and protection on their jobs. Nevertheless, they have been portrayed predominantly as heroes rather than as victims, which may inadvertently lead third parties (e.g., the general public) to overlook their suffering. The current research sought to understand the implications of these divergent social accounts of essential employees for third parties. We investigated the effects of third parties being provided with (Study 1) and endorsing (Study 2 and Study 3) heroism and victimization accounts on their cognitions, emotions, and behaviors toward essential employees. Unlike victimization which was associated with higher levels of third parties’ injustice perceptions, anger and sympathy toward essential employees’ situation, and their intent to take political action to support essential workers, we found that heroism was only significantly related to higher levels of sympathy and had limited effects on other outcomes. Further, victimization was a more important predictor of injustice and anger than heroism. Overall, the sharp contrast between the two accounts points to the caveats of overemphasizing heroism accounts in the COVID-19 pandemic as they may divert third parties’ attention away from essential employees’ suffering. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.
Altruistic Acting Caused by a Touching Hand: Neural Underpinnings of the Midas Touch Effect
Michael Schaefer et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Giving and receiving touch are some of the most important social stimuli we exchange in daily life. By touching someone we can communicate various information. Previous studies have also demonstrated that interpersonal touch may affect our altruistic behavior. A classic study showed that customers give bigger tips when they are lightly touched by a waitress, which has been called the Midas touch effect. Numerous studies reported similar effects of touch on different kinds of helping or prosocial behavior. Here we aim to examine the neural underpinnings of this effect by employing a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) approach. While lying in the scanner, participants played different rounds of the dictator game, a measure of prosocial behavior. Before each round participants were touched (or not touched in the control condition) by an experimenter. We found that touching the hand increased the likeliness to behave prosocial (but not the general liking of control stimuli), thereby confirming the Midas touch effect. The effect was predicted by activity in the primary somatosensory cortex, suggesting that the somatosensory cortex here plays a causal role in prosocial behavior. We conclude that the tactile modality in social life may be much more important than previously thought.
Minding Your Own Business? Mindfulness Decreases Prosocial Behavior for People With Independent Self-Construals
Michael Poulin et al.
Psychological Science, November 2021, 1699-1708
Abstract:
Mindfulness appears to promote individual well-being, but its interpersonal effects are less clear. Two studies in adult populations tested whether the effects of mindfulness on prosocial behavior differ according to individuals’ self-construals. In Study 1 (N = 366), a brief mindfulness induction, compared with a meditation control condition, led to decreased prosocial behavior among people with relatively independent self-construals but had the opposite effect among those with relatively interdependent self-construals. In Study 2 (N = 325), a mindfulness induction led to decreased prosocial behavior among people primed with independence but had the opposite effect among those primed with interdependence. The effects of mindfulness on prosocial behavior appear to depend on individuals’ broader social goals. This may have implications for the increasing popularity of mindfulness training around the world.
Signaling benefits of partner choice decisions
Nathan Dhaliwal et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
When deciding whom to choose for a cooperative interaction, two features of prospective partners are especially relevant: ability to provide benefits, and willingness to provide those benefits. Often, these traits are correlated. But, when ability and willingness are in conflict, people often indicate that they value willingness over ability, even when doing so results in immediate losses. Why would such behavior be favored by natural selection acting at the level of the individual? Across nine experimental studies (seven preregistered) and a mathematical model we explore one way of explaining this costly choice, demonstrating that choosing a willing over an able partner affords one a moral reputation and makes one more likely to be chosen as a cooperation partner. In fact, even people who choose an able over a willing partner for themselves prefer others who choose a willing over an able partner. Crucial to our model, we find that valuing willingness over ability is an honest signal of both higher levels of generosity in an economic game and lower levels of trait Machiavellianism. These findings provide the first extensive exploration of the signaling benefits of partner choice decisions. Furthermore, this work provides one explanation for why we choose those who are willing over those who are able, even at a cost to ourselves: By doing so, we in turn look like good potential partners.
To Reveal or Not to Reveal a Secret: Navigating the Conflict between Honesty and Loyalty
Eric VanEpps, Einav Hart & Maurice Schweitzer
University of Pennsylvania Working Paper, April 2021
Abstract:
Secrets create moral dilemmas. Individuals who know others’ secrets face a choice: to be honest (and reveal the secret) or to be loyal (and keep the secret). We introduce a triadic model of secret-keeping involving a focal actor who knows a partner’s secret, a partner who has a secret, and an audience likely interested in knowing the secret information; the actor faces conflicting obligations: to be honest with the audience or to be loyal to the partner. Across four pre-registered experiments (N=1,514), we show that observers judge actors who privilege honesty (and reveal the secret) to be more moral but less likable than actors who privilege loyalty (and keep the secret). The nature of the secret information moderates these interpersonal judgments. When the secret information involves unethical behavior, observers judge actors who disclose secrets to be more moral (and less likable) than they judge actors who keep secrets, but when the secret information does not involve unethical behavior, observers judge actors who disclose secrets to be less moral (and much less likable) than actors who keep secrets.
Decoupling cooperation and punishment in humans shows that punishment is not an altruistic trait
Maxwell Burton-Chellew & Claire Guérin
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 10 November 2021
Abstract:
Economic experiments have suggested that cooperative humans will altruistically match local levels of cooperation (conditional cooperation) and pay to punish non-cooperators (altruistic punishment). Evolutionary models have suggested that if altruists punish non-altruists this could favour the evolution of costly helping behaviours (cooperation) among strangers. An often-key requirement is that helping behaviours and punishing behaviours form one single conjoined trait (strong reciprocity). Previous economics experiments have provided support for the hypothesis that punishment and cooperation form one conjoined, altruistically motivated, trait. However, such a conjoined trait may be evolutionarily unstable, and previous experiments have confounded a fear of being punished with being surrounded by cooperators, two factors that could favour cooperation. Here, we experimentally decouple the fear of punishment from a cooperative environment and allow cooperation and punishment behaviour to freely separate (420 participants). We show, that if a minority of individuals is made immune to punishment, they (i) learn to stop cooperating on average despite being surrounded by high levels of cooperation, contradicting the idea of conditional cooperation and (ii) often continue to punish, ‘hypocritically’, showing that cooperation and punishment do not form one, altruistically motivated, linked trait.