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The salience of choice reduces social responsibility: evidence from lab experiments and compliance with COVID-19 stay-at-home orders

The tension between self-interest and the collective good is fundamental to human societies. We propose that the idea of choice is a key lever that nudges people to act in a self-interested manner because it leads people to value independence. Making one inconsequential choice at the beginning of an...

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Autores principales: Wang, Yan, Savani, Krishna
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9802458/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36714846
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac200
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author Wang, Yan
Savani, Krishna
author_facet Wang, Yan
Savani, Krishna
author_sort Wang, Yan
collection PubMed
description The tension between self-interest and the collective good is fundamental to human societies. We propose that the idea of choice is a key lever that nudges people to act in a self-interested manner because it leads people to value independence. Making one inconsequential choice at the beginning of an incentive-compatible lab experiment made people 41% more likely to choose a monetary allocation that maximized their own payoff while minimizing the total payoff of their group (Studies 1A and 1B). The next two studies featured seven-participant experimental markets in which sellers decided whether to produce conventional goods (which imposed costs on others) or socially responsible goods (which did not impose any costs), and buyers decided which goods to purchase. In markets in which members made a single inconsequential choice, the market share of the socially responsible good was reduced by a factor of 34% (Studies 2A and 2B). In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, framing socially responsible actions as choices increased people’s willingness to hoard and violate social distancing rules (Study 3). Highlighting the idea of choice reduced people’s desire to engage in corporate social responsibility, and this effect was mediated by an increased emphasis on independence (Study 4). Finally, using cell phone location data, an archival study found that in states in which people were more likely to search for choice-related words on the internet in 2019, residents were more likely to leave their homes following a stay-at-home order, after controlling for state-level income, education, diversity, population density, and political orientation (Study 5).
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spelling pubmed-98024582023-01-26 The salience of choice reduces social responsibility: evidence from lab experiments and compliance with COVID-19 stay-at-home orders Wang, Yan Savani, Krishna PNAS Nexus Social and Political Sciences The tension between self-interest and the collective good is fundamental to human societies. We propose that the idea of choice is a key lever that nudges people to act in a self-interested manner because it leads people to value independence. Making one inconsequential choice at the beginning of an incentive-compatible lab experiment made people 41% more likely to choose a monetary allocation that maximized their own payoff while minimizing the total payoff of their group (Studies 1A and 1B). The next two studies featured seven-participant experimental markets in which sellers decided whether to produce conventional goods (which imposed costs on others) or socially responsible goods (which did not impose any costs), and buyers decided which goods to purchase. In markets in which members made a single inconsequential choice, the market share of the socially responsible good was reduced by a factor of 34% (Studies 2A and 2B). In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, framing socially responsible actions as choices increased people’s willingness to hoard and violate social distancing rules (Study 3). Highlighting the idea of choice reduced people’s desire to engage in corporate social responsibility, and this effect was mediated by an increased emphasis on independence (Study 4). Finally, using cell phone location data, an archival study found that in states in which people were more likely to search for choice-related words on the internet in 2019, residents were more likely to leave their homes following a stay-at-home order, after controlling for state-level income, education, diversity, population density, and political orientation (Study 5). Oxford University Press 2022-09-22 /pmc/articles/PMC9802458/ /pubmed/36714846 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac200 Text en © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of National Academy of Sciences. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Social and Political Sciences
Wang, Yan
Savani, Krishna
The salience of choice reduces social responsibility: evidence from lab experiments and compliance with COVID-19 stay-at-home orders
title The salience of choice reduces social responsibility: evidence from lab experiments and compliance with COVID-19 stay-at-home orders
title_full The salience of choice reduces social responsibility: evidence from lab experiments and compliance with COVID-19 stay-at-home orders
title_fullStr The salience of choice reduces social responsibility: evidence from lab experiments and compliance with COVID-19 stay-at-home orders
title_full_unstemmed The salience of choice reduces social responsibility: evidence from lab experiments and compliance with COVID-19 stay-at-home orders
title_short The salience of choice reduces social responsibility: evidence from lab experiments and compliance with COVID-19 stay-at-home orders
title_sort salience of choice reduces social responsibility: evidence from lab experiments and compliance with covid-19 stay-at-home orders
topic Social and Political Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9802458/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36714846
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac200
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