Experimental Economics Group, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
Department of Psychology, Ruhr-University.
Psychol Aging. 2021 Feb;36(1):108-118. doi: 10.1037/pag0000457.
Understanding persistence and changes in prosociality across the life span is fundamental to inform theory and practice. As life expectancy increases and pressing societal challenges demand increasing generosity and cooperation among individuals, it is crucial to understand intergenerational interactions. We present the findings from a novel lab-in-the-field experiment (N = 359, 18-90 years) that examines generosity and cooperation between generations. Our methodological approach allows us to study the effect of age on prosocial behavior as a function of the age of an unknown partner. We ask participants to make several decisions, and to state their expectations for their partners' behavior, in a dictator game and a prisoner's dilemma game with real monetary outcomes. The dictator game serves as a measure of generosity, whereas the prisoner's dilemma serves as a measure of cooperation. We find that individuals used age as key information to condition behavior. Generosity was greater among older adults in response to young and older relative to middle-aged partners. Among younger adults, cooperation was greater in response to middle-aged and older partners relative to their own age cohort. All age groups expect less cooperation from young partners than from older and middle-aged partners. However, relative to young adults, older adults are more cooperative with young partners. Our study has crucial implications for the understanding of human generosity and cooperation across the life span. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
理解整个生命周期中亲社会行为的持久性和变化对于理论和实践都至关重要。随着预期寿命的延长和紧迫的社会挑战要求个体之间越来越慷慨和合作，理解代际互动至关重要。我们展示了一项新的现场实验室实验（N=359，年龄 18-90 岁）的结果，该实验研究了代际之间的慷慨和合作。我们的方法学方法使我们能够研究年龄对亲社会行为的影响，作为未知伙伴年龄的函数。我们要求参与者在独裁者游戏和囚犯困境游戏中做出多次决策，并对自己的行为表现出期望，游戏中有真实的货币结果。独裁者游戏作为慷慨的衡量标准，而囚犯困境游戏作为合作的衡量标准。我们发现，个体将年龄用作行为的关键信息。与中年和老年相比，老年人对年轻人和老年人的慷慨程度更高。在年轻成年人中，与同龄和老年伙伴相比，他们对中年伙伴的合作程度更高。所有年龄组都期望年轻伙伴的合作程度低于中年和老年伙伴。然而，与年轻成年人相比，老年人与年轻伙伴的合作程度更高。我们的研究对理解整个人生跨度中的人类慷慨和合作具有重要意义。
