Trust, Reciprocity and Religion in a University Setting: An Experimental Approach

Author(s):  
Sushmita . ◽  
Shivam Kumar Singh ◽  
Arunima Gupta ◽  
Kanishk Singh ◽  
Kanishk Singh

A distinctive feature of economics that sets it apart from other fields in social sciences is that we base it on the belief that it can explain most behavioural actions by assuming that all consumers are rational and have well-defined preferences. If a decision is difficult to 'rationalise,' it is considered as an anomaly. By using various games such as “ultimatum” games and “public goods” games, the paper experimentally tries to observe the effects of bias and discrimination on the economic decisions of individuals with opponents of distinct ethnic and gender affiliation and uses the "dictator game," to detect a systematic mistrust toward players of different religious origins. By this we tried to identify whether strategies differed based on religious affiliations and gender identities. While standard economic theory claims that individuals are rational actors and will always act out of self-interest, games played with our respondents showed exciting results.

1989 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 99-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Elster

One of the most persistent cleavages in the social sciences is the opposition between two lines of thought conveniently associated with Adam Smith and Emile Durkheim, between homo economicus and homo sociologicus. Of these, the former is supposed to be guided by instrumental rationality, while the behavior of the latter is dictated by social norms. In this paper I characterize this contrast more fully, and discuss attempts by economists to reduce normoriented action to some type of optimizing behavior. Social norms, as I understand them here, are emotional and behavioral propensities of individuals. Are norms rationalizations of self-interest? Are norms followed out of self-interest? Do norms exist to promote self-interest? Do norms exist to promote common interests? Do norms exist to promote genetic fitness?


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 825-825
Author(s):  
Liat Ayalon ◽  
Josep Armengol ◽  
Michael Kimmel

Abstract Traditionally, gerontology research has been relatively genderless. When the intersection of age and gender was explored, this was done primarily by focusing on the experiences of older women. Much less is known about the experiences of older men. The present symposium brings together work from the humanities and the social sciences in order to explore societal images and personal experiences of aging men. The paper by Maierhofer and Ratzenböck provides a theoretical outlook on this intersection from the humanities perspective, followed by empirical applications from the social sciences. Next, Armengol uses contemporary American literature to challenge the traditional stereotype of decline in sexuality and masculinity. The paper by Ni Leime & O’Neill examines stereotypes of aging masculinities, but this time from the perspective of older men as the audience who react to their portrayal in visual culture. Finally, Ayalon and Gweyrtz-Meydan present ethical dilemmas faced by physicians who treat older men’s sexuality in light of active marketing campaigns of the pharmaceutical industry, which advocate for a model of successful aging and ongoing sexual intercourse. The discussant, Kimmel, will conceptualize the four papers by stressing the different types of information that can be obtained via different methods of inquiry. The complementary information provided by the different papers and the integration of methods and findings from the humanities with the social sciences will be discussed.


Author(s):  
Minha Lee ◽  
Gale Lucas ◽  
Jonathan Gratch

AbstractRecent research shows that how we respond to other social actors depends on what sort of mind we ascribe to them. In a comparative manner, we observed how perceived minds of agents shape people’s behavior in the dictator game, ultimatum game, and negotiation against artificial agents. To do so, we varied agents’ minds on two dimensions of the mind perception theory: agency (cognitive aptitude) and patiency (affective aptitude) via descriptions and dialogs. In our first study, agents with emotional capacity garnered more allocations in the dictator game, but in the ultimatum game, agents’ described agency and affective capacity, both led to greater offers. In the second study on negotiation, agents ascribed with low-agency traits earned more points than those with high-agency traits, though the negotiation tactic was the same for all agents. Although patiency did not impact game points, participants sent more happy and surprise emojis and emotionally valenced messages to agents that demonstrated emotional capacity during negotiations. Further, our exploratory analyses indicate that people related only to agents with perceived affective aptitude across all games. Both perceived agency and affective capacity contributed to moral standing after dictator and ultimatum games. But after negotiations, only agents with perceived affective capacity were granted moral standing. Manipulating mind dimensions of machines has differing effects on how people react to them in dictator and ultimatum games, compared to a more complex economic exchange like negotiation. We discuss these results, which show that agents are perceived not only as social actors, but as intentional actors through negotiations, in contrast with simple economic games.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toshiko Tanaka ◽  
Tsuyoshi Nihonsugi ◽  
Fumio Ohtake ◽  
Masahiko Haruno

Abstract The most promising way to prevent the explosive spread of COVID-19 infection is to achieve herd immunity through vaccination. It is therefore important to motivate those who are less willing to be vaccinated. To address this issue, we conducted an online survey of 6232 Japanese people to investigate age- and gender- dependent differences in attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and the underlying psychological processes. We asked participants to read one of nine different messages about COVID-19 vaccination and rate their willingness to be vaccinated. We also collected their 17 social personality trait scores and demographic information. We found that males 10-20 years old showed the minimum willingness to be vaccinated. We also found that prosocial traits are the driving force for young people, but the motivation in older people also depends on risk aversion and self-interest. Furthermore, an analysis of 9 different messages demonstrated that for young people (particularly males), the message emphasizing the majority’s intention to vaccinate and scientific evidence for the safety of the vaccination had the strongest positive effect on the willingness to be vaccinated, suggesting that the herding effect arising from the “majority + scientific evidence” message nudges young people to show their prosocial nature in action.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben M Tappin ◽  
Valerio Capraro

Prosociality is fundamental to human social life, and, accordingly, much research has attempted to explain human prosocial behavior. Capraro and Rand (Judgment and Decision Making, 13, 99-111, 2018) recently provided experimental evidence that prosociality in anonymous, one-shot interactions (such as Prisoner’s Dilemma and Dictator Game experiments) is not driven by outcome-based social preferences – as classically assumed – but by a generalized morality preference for “doing the right thing”. Here we argue that the key experiments reported in Capraro and Rand (2018) comprise prominent methodological confounds and open questions that bear on influential psychological theory. Specifically, their design confounds: (i) preferences for efficiency with self-interest; and (ii) preferences for action with preferences for morality. Furthermore, their design fails to dissociate the preference to do “good” from the preference to avoid doing “bad”. We thus designed and conducted a preregistered, refined and extended test of the morality preference hypothesis (N=801). Consistent with this hypothesis, our findings indicate that prosociality in the anonymous, one-shot Dictator Game is driven by preferences for doing the morally right thing. Inconsistent with influential psychological theory, however, our results suggest the preference to do “good” was as potent as the preference to avoid doing “bad” in this case.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Toshiko Tanaka ◽  
Tsuyoshi Nihonsugi ◽  
Fumio Ohtake ◽  
Masahiko Haruno

AbstractThe most promising way to prevent the explosive spread of COVID-19 infection is to achieve herd immunity through vaccination. It is therefore important to motivate those who are less willing to be vaccinated. To address this issue, we conducted an online survey of 6232 Japanese people to investigate age- and gender-dependent differences in attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and the underlying psychological processes. We asked participants to read one of nine different messages about COVID-19 vaccination and rate their willingness to be vaccinated. We also collected their 17 social personality trait scores and demographic information. We found that males 10–20 years old were least willing to be vaccinated. We also found that prosocial traits are the driving force for young people, but the motivation in older people also depends on risk aversion and self-interest. Furthermore, an analysis of 9 different messages demonstrated that for young people (particularly males), the message emphasizing the majority’s intention to vaccinate and scientific evidence for the safety of the vaccination had the strongest positive effect on the willingness to be vaccinated, suggesting that the “majority + scientific evidence” message nudges young people to show their prosocial nature in action.


Author(s):  
Alan Ryan

This chapter describes a “dramatistic,” “dramatic,” or “dramaturgical” approach to the study of social interaction. It asks whether the dramaturgical model insists on the theatricality of social life merely in the sense of insisting that people fill roles just as persons act parts in a play. This is the question of whether the crucial element in the dramaturgical picture is that cluster of insights that goes under the general heading of “role distance.” The chapter considers the peculiarities of rational explanation and about the role of reconstructions of “the thing to do” other than the role of explaining an action or series of actions by focusing on voting behavior in the terms proposed by Anthony Downs's An Economic Theory of Democracy. It also examines some recent accounts of the phenomenon of suicide, along with the rationality principle, which Karl Popper calls “false but indispensable” to the social sciences.


2003 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-77
Author(s):  
Kris Chesky ◽  
Karendra Devroop

Studies in the social sciences imply a relationship between levels of employment and potential adverse effects on health. The lack of information regarding musicians makes it difficult to describe and prepare for the potential adverse relationships between musicians’ economic patterns and health. The purpose of this study was to characterize economic patterns of musicians and to investigate the relationships between income from performing music and college music instruction, age, and gender. A total of 4,017 subjects participated in an Internet-based musician survey. Data analysis included the use of descriptive statistics, analysis of covariance, and multiple regression analysis. Results support the view that many musicians hold multiple jobs and that income from music performance is often a secondary source of income. Musicians with ≥4 years of college music instruction earned higher levels of income from performing music compared with musicians with less college music instruction. This study recognizes the need to consider the economic patterns of musicians and how these patterns may affect health adversely.


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