Comments on: Altruism on Amazon Mechanical Turk

By: Turil

Turil — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:39:59 +0000

The other factor that is useful to point out is the environment factor. Cooperation allows for a healthier environment (when my neighbor does well, she’s less likely to need something from me, and is more likely to be generous with me), thus, in a heavily populated area (such as the planet Earth) the most rational choice IS cooperation.

By: Thorstein Veblen

Thorstein Veblen — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:56:25 +0000

David – The distinction Judd is pointing to is between altruism as a motivation and altruism as a behavior. Most social scientists use the term “altruism” to describe a psychological motivation to help others. Most biologists use the term to refer to a behavior that benefits others at a cost to the self. So while a biologist would say tat cooperation in a one-shot PD is altruistic for the reason you state, most social scientists would say that such a behavior might be altruistic depending on the motivation underlying the action.

Neither is the “correct” definition, but the distinction between prosocial behavior that is motivated by a sincere desire to benefit others as opposed to some form of self-interest (e.g., pursuit of an improved reputation, status, approval, avoidance of sanctions, “shadow of the future” in repeated interactions) is important to psychologists and social scientists.

By: David Rand

David Rand — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:47:00 +0000

Although its true that we can’t be certain about how the subjects were thinking about the experiment, we did try to make it as clear as possible that it was a one-shot anonymous game with no side-effects. The following text was included in the instructions:

“You have been randomly assigned to interact with another person who also completes this HIT. You will never know who this other person is, and they will never know who you are. Both of you receive this same set of instructions. You cannot participate in this game more than once. [Explains the interaction setup] Once you and the other person have chosen an option, the interaction is over. Neither you nor the other person receives any bonus other than what comes out of this interaction. “

By: Rowan Nairn

Rowan Nairn — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 06:37:01 +0000

It seems like an oversimplification to say that the rational choice is to always pick B. Although you know that the experiment is one-shot, completely anonymous and has no side-effects for the participants, they may not be so sure. That uncertainty could increase their perceived utility of cooperation. That may be what Judd is referring to above.

By: David Rand

David Rand — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:50:39 +0000

Hi Judd,

Thanks for sharing the links – both are great blogs for this sort of thing!

In terms of defining different terms, I agree that altruism is a subset of pro-social. But cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma is altruistic, because it reduces your payoff while increasing the other person’s. No matter what the other player chooses, you earn more by defecting. So cooperating is altruistic, it seems to me…

Dave

By: Judd Antin

Judd Antin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:52:50 +0000

Hi David,

Great stuff! I wanted to share some links to others who are have done similar experiments using AMT, in case you or others haven’t seen them. The Experimental Turk Blog (http://experimentalturk.wordpress.com/) is entirely dedicated to replicating classic game theory and behavioral econ. experiments on the Turk. Panos Ipeirotis at NYU’s Stern School of business (http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/) has also done some experiments like yours.

Secondly, IMO altruism is not the right term for the behavior you observe. The reason is that altruism refers to situations where someone is wholly and unselfishly motivated by the rewards of others. Pro-social behavior, on the other hand, is any behavior that benefits others, often (but not always) at one’s own expense. So altruism is one possible motivation for pro-social behavior, but there are lots of others – the expectation of future reciprocity, for example. There’s a great discussion of the confusion around these terms in:

Simpson, Brent and Robb Willer. 2008. \Altruism and Indirect Reciprocity: The Interaction of Person and Situation in Prosocial Behavior.” Social Psychology Quarterly 71:37-52.

By: David Rand

David Rand — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:18:49 +0000

Agreed. And S, the paper isn’t published yet, so I don’t have a link to share. When it’s out, I will update. In the meantime, people might enjoy this paper of mine about altruism in young children:

http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~drand/blake_rand_ehb_2009.pdf

of this one comparing reward and punishment for promoting cooperation:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/325/5945/1272

By: Turil

Turil — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:24:05 +0000

Thanks for the follow up David, I’d add one small, but important (to some) change and say that the results suggest that: a Christian bible passage about charity has a significant impact on cooperation, but not among people who don’t associate themselves with their own person concept of God.

Anyway, thanks for offering the study results, it is interesting.

By: S

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:58:45 +0000

Link to the paper!

By: David Rand

David Rand — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:03:56 +0000

The specific question we asked was “Have you ever had an experience which convinced you of the existence of god?”, letting them interpret it as they like. These issues that you raise are certainly real, but i think probably cancel each other out as random noise – some people who do believe in some type of god but aren’t religious, and some people who are religious/spiritual but don’t believe in god. The way I interpret our results is to say that a Christian bible passage about charity has a significant impact on cooperation, but not among people who don’t associate themselves with the formal concept of God. The point was not so much about religion/belief in particular, but more about priming in general – we just used religion as a proof-of-concept, that priming effects exist, but that their effect is not universal.

By: Turil

Turil — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:46:47 +0000

I’m wondering if you clarify what you mean by “god” when you asked people if they believe in it. I’ve noticed that in a lot of these studies it’s really unclear, and it’s impossible for me to answer accurately. I know a lot of people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious, or believe in “a consciousness greater than humans” but are loathe to call it “God” or even a “god”, because of the stigma attached to the term these days of sort of reverse discrimination. And also, many folks who believe in God don’t consider themselves religious.

So I guess my question is what are the specific traits that you are interested in testing out here when it comes to this idea of religion or “god” or “God”?

By: David Rand

David Rand — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:30:21 +0000

The issue of stake size has plagued experimental economics for a long time. However, a number of studies have demonstrated the persistence of pro-social preferences with higher stakes – for example $100 games with american college students, and various studies in third world countries with stakes equivalent to several months wages. So although higher stakes may have some degree of effect, it doesn’t matter as much as you would think…

By: Sc

Sc — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:06:51 +0000

Very interesting.

I wonder if the tiny size of the bonus made a difference here. 40 cents isn’t a huge amount to sacrifice. If there were a million dollars at stake, would the behavior be different? If so, is there a simple linear relationship between bonus size and altruism, or is there a tipping point somewhere? Unfortunately, it would likely be prohibitively expensive to test that.

By: David Rand

David Rand — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:01:24 +0000

Two very interesting questions!

Pedro and Ernesto Dal Bo have performed an experiment looking at the effects of priming in repeated games:

http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/Pedro_Dal_Bo/rightthing.pdf

They find that in a repeated multi-player Prisoner’s Dilemma, the effect of the prime is transient – over a series of decisions the boost in cooperation caused by the prime decays. But they also find that when the PD is coupled with a chance to explicitly punish others, the prime has a lasting effect.

I’m not aware of research which asks what can block or reduce priming effects, but again a great question.

By: Turker

Turker — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:47:23 +0000

have you done experiments to see how long this priming effect lasts?
are there any classes of activities that tend to interfere with this priming effect? (having participant memorize lists of numbers, etc…) thanks