Higher socioeconomic status does not predict decreased prosocial behavior in a field experiment

Does higher socioeconomic status predict decreased prosocial behavior? Methodological issues such as the reliance of survey studies on self-reported measures of prosociality, the insufficient control of relative incentives in experiments, and the use of non-random samples, have prevented researchers...

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Autores principales: Andreoni, James, Nikiforakis, Nikos, Stoop, Jan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8275767/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34253718
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24519-5
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author Andreoni, James
Nikiforakis, Nikos
Stoop, Jan
author_facet Andreoni, James
Nikiforakis, Nikos
Stoop, Jan
author_sort Andreoni, James
collection PubMed
description Does higher socioeconomic status predict decreased prosocial behavior? Methodological issues such as the reliance of survey studies on self-reported measures of prosociality, the insufficient control of relative incentives in experiments, and the use of non-random samples, have prevented researchers from ruling out that there is a negative association between socioeconomic status (SES) and prosociality. Here, we present results from a field experiment on the willingness of unaware individuals of different SES to undertake an effortful prosocial task—returning a misdelivered letter. Specifically, using the rental or sale value of homes as indicators of SES, we randomly selected households of high and low SES and misdelivered envelopes to them. Despite controlling for numerous covariates and performing a series of ancillary tests, we fail to find any evidence that higher SES predicts decreased prosocial behavior. Instead, we find that misdelivered letters are substantially more likely to be returned from high rather than low SES households.
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spelling pubmed-82757672021-07-20 Higher socioeconomic status does not predict decreased prosocial behavior in a field experiment Andreoni, James Nikiforakis, Nikos Stoop, Jan Nat Commun Article Does higher socioeconomic status predict decreased prosocial behavior? Methodological issues such as the reliance of survey studies on self-reported measures of prosociality, the insufficient control of relative incentives in experiments, and the use of non-random samples, have prevented researchers from ruling out that there is a negative association between socioeconomic status (SES) and prosociality. Here, we present results from a field experiment on the willingness of unaware individuals of different SES to undertake an effortful prosocial task—returning a misdelivered letter. Specifically, using the rental or sale value of homes as indicators of SES, we randomly selected households of high and low SES and misdelivered envelopes to them. Despite controlling for numerous covariates and performing a series of ancillary tests, we fail to find any evidence that higher SES predicts decreased prosocial behavior. Instead, we find that misdelivered letters are substantially more likely to be returned from high rather than low SES households. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-07-12 /pmc/articles/PMC8275767/ /pubmed/34253718 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24519-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Andreoni, James
Nikiforakis, Nikos
Stoop, Jan
Higher socioeconomic status does not predict decreased prosocial behavior in a field experiment
title Higher socioeconomic status does not predict decreased prosocial behavior in a field experiment
title_full Higher socioeconomic status does not predict decreased prosocial behavior in a field experiment
title_fullStr Higher socioeconomic status does not predict decreased prosocial behavior in a field experiment
title_full_unstemmed Higher socioeconomic status does not predict decreased prosocial behavior in a field experiment
title_short Higher socioeconomic status does not predict decreased prosocial behavior in a field experiment
title_sort higher socioeconomic status does not predict decreased prosocial behavior in a field experiment
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8275767/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34253718
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24519-5
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