Centre for Decision Research, Leeds University Business School & School of Earth and Environment, The University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom.
Harding Center for Risk Literacy, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany.
PLoS One. 2018 Aug 20;13(8):e0201358. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0201358. eCollection 2018.
Human social interactions in daily life involve sharing various types of rewards. Previous research evolving around issues of selfish versus altruistic behavior indicates that when individuals share rewards like money with powerless others, some are purely selfish while a substantial number shares evenly. It is, however, mostly unknown how they share primary rewards like water, compared to secondary rewards like money. We adopt the widely studied Dictator Game for comparing water to be divided among study participants with a monetary reward. We show that thirsty participants share water more often equally with powerless, anonymous others than they do money. This is the case even when they earned both types of rewards in a preceding task. Results indicate that altruistic behavior is more likely to occur when it comes to sharing primary rewards. The ecologically more valid scenario employed in this study provides initial evidence that the concept of a self-interested homo economicus might not apply to everyday social interactions involving rewards other than money.
日常生活中的人类社交互动涉及分享各种类型的奖励。围绕自私与利他行为问题的先前研究表明，当个体与无权势的他人分享金钱等奖励时，有些人纯粹是自私的，而相当一部分人则平均分配。然而，与金钱等次要奖励相比，人们如何分享水等主要奖励还不太清楚。我们采用广泛研究的独裁者博弈来比较参与者之间的水分配，参与者可以获得金钱奖励。我们发现，口渴的参与者更愿意与无权势的匿名他人平均分配水，而不是分配金钱。即使他们在之前的任务中同时获得了这两种奖励，也是如此。结果表明，在分享主要奖励时，利他行为更有可能发生。本研究采用的生态更有效的场景提供了初步证据，表明自我利益的经济人概念可能不适用于涉及金钱以外的奖励的日常社交互动。
