How effort-based self-interest motivation shapes altruistic donation behavior and brain responses.

Prosocial behaviors are central to individual and societal well-being. Although the relationship between effort and prosocial behavior is increasingly studied, the impact of effort-based self-interested motivation on prosocial behavior has received less attention. In the current study, we carried out two experiments to examine the effect of motivation to obtain a reward for oneself on donation behavior and brain response. We observed that individuals who accumulated more money in the effort-expenditure rewards task (EEfRT) donated a lower proportion of their earnings. The sigmoid model fitted participants' choices in the EEfRT task, and the effort-reward bias and sigma parameters negatively correlated with the amount of money donated in the donation task. Additionally, the effort-reward bias and sigma parameters negatively predicted N2 amplitude during processing of charitable donation-related information. We propose that individuals who exhibit a lower level of effort-based self-interest motivation may allocate more cognitive control or attentional resources when processing information related to charitable donations. Our work adds weight to understanding the relationship between effort-based self-interest motivation and prosocial behavior and provides electrophysiological evidence.

Self-interest, positional concerns and distributional considerations in healthcare preferences.

Efficiently allocating scarce healthcare resources requires nuanced understanding of individual and collective interests as well as relative concerns, which may overlap or conflict. This paper is the first to empirically investigate whether and to what extent self-interest (SI), positional concerns (PC) and distributional considerations (DC) simultaneously explain individual decision making related to access to healthcare services. Our investigation is based on a stated choice experiment conducted in two countries with different healthcare systems, the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK). The choice experiment is on allocation of medical treatment waiting times for a hypothetical disease. We carry out the investigation under two different perspectives: (i) in a socially inclusive personal perspective decision makers were asked to choose between waiting time distributions for themselves and (ii) in a social perspective decision makers were asked to make similar choices for a close relative or friend of opposite gender. The results obtained by estimating a variety of advanced choice models indicate that DC, SI and PC, in this order of importance, are significant drivers of choice behaviour in our empirical context. These findings are consistent regardless of the choice perspective and the country where decision makers live. Comparing the results from different choice perspectives, we find that US respondents who chose for their close relative or friend attach significantly larger weight to their close relative's or friend's waiting times as well as to the overall distribution of waiting times than US respondents who chose for themselves. Looking at differences between countries, our results show that UK respondents who made choices for themselves placed significantly larger weight on SI and DC than US respondents, while US respondents, in turn, displayed relatively stronger but not significantly different positional concerns than UK respondents. In addition, we observe that UK respondents who chose for their close relative or friend put a larger weight on DC than their US counterparts. We conclude that the methodological (data collection and analysis) approach allows for disentangling the relative importance of the three motivations and discusses the potential implications of these findings for healthcare decision making.

People's Preferences for Inequality Respond Instantly to Changes in Status: A Simulated Society Experiment of Conflict Between the Rich and the Poor.

Most people in the United States agree they want some income inequality but debate exactly how much is fair. High-status people generally prefer more inequality than low-status individuals. Here we examine how much preferences for inequality are (or are not) driven by self-interest. Past work has generally investigated this idea in two ways: The first is by stratifying preferences by income, and the second is by randomly assigning financial status within lab-constructed scenarios. In this paper, we develop a method that combines both experimental control and the social experience of inequality-a simulated society experiment. Across two experiments (N = 138, observations = 690), participants voted on the distribution of rewards-first behind a veil of ignorance, and then when they were randomly assigned a status within a game of chance. Status varied repeatedly across five rounds, allowing us to measure dynamic preferences. Under the veil of ignorance, people preferred inequality favoring the top status. When the veil of ignorance disappeared, self-interest immediately influenced inequality preferences. Those who randomly landed in top positions were satisfied with the status quo established under the veil of ignorance, whereas those who randomly landed in bottom positions wanted more equality. Yet these preferences were not stable; decisions about the optimal level of inequality changed according to changes in social status. Our results also showed that, when inequality grows in a society, preferences regarding inequality become polarized by social status. Individuals in low-status positions, particularly, tend to demand more equality.

Altruism or self-interest in tomorrow's veterinarians? A metric conjoint experiment and cluster analysis.

Introduction: Altruism is considered a trait of veterinary and other health professionals, but the level of altruism in the veterinary profession is unknown. We designed a metric conjoint experiment to reveal other-orientation (an individual's caring concern for the wellbeing of others) and self-interest. We draw on the 'Theory of Other-Orientation', which states that individuals' decision-making heuristics can be impacted by their other-orientation independent of their self-interest. In patient-focused contexts, highly other-oriented or altruistic (veterinary) professionals may care too much for others and suffer immediate or cumulative financial and personal costs of such caring. At the same time, other-orientation can enhance job-related attitudes and outcomes, such as job satisfaction. Methods: In a metric conjoint experiment, Australian final-year veterinary, science, nursing, entrepreneurship, and engineering students rated eight job scenarios with orthogonally arranged high and low levels of three job characteristics (n = 586) to provide observed measures of other-orientation and self-interest. Results: A two-way MANOVA showed other-orientation or self-interest differed per discipline, but not gender. Veterinary (and engineering) respondents were less other-oriented than nursing respondents. Veterinary (and entrepreneurship) respondents were more self-interested than nursing respondents. K-Means cluster analysis confirmed four distinct profile groupings-altruistic/self-sacrificing, 'both other-self', self-interested and selfish-aligning with the discourse in the literature. Human nursing respondents stood out for the most members (50%) in the 'both other-self' profile compared to veterinary respondents (28%). Respondents of one of three veterinary schools stood out for the most members (19%) in the altruistic/self-sacrificing group. Discussion: Our metric conjoint experiment illustrates an alternative to 'self-report' items with Likert-scaled responses. Our finding of the 'both other-self' group adds to the literature, which considers that other-orientation and self-interest are separate constructs that are difficult to co-exist in individuals. This mix of traits is deemed helpful by organizational psychology scholars, for sustainability and wellbeing, especially for healthcare professionals involved in high-frequency and intense, patient-focused interactions. Our findings highlight the need for more research on the potential role of other-orientation and self-interest in veterinary school admissions processes, the hidden or taught curricula, job-related attitudes and beliefs, and wellbeing and professional sustainability in the veterinary sector.

Are distributional preferences for safety stable? A longitudinal analysis before and after the COVID-19 outbreak.

Policy makers aim to respect public preferences when making trade-offs between policies, yet most estimates of the value of safety neglect individuals' preferences over how safety is distributed. Incorporating these preferences into policy first requires measuring them. Arroyos-Calvera et al. (2019) documented that people cared most about efficiency, but that equity followed closely, and self-interest mattered too, but not enough to override preferences for efficiency and equity. Early 2020 saw the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This event would impose major changes in how people perceived and experienced risk to life, creating an opportunity to test whether safety-related preferences are stable and robust to important contextual changes. Further developing Arroyos-Calvera et al.'s methodology and re-inviting an international general population sample of participants that had taken part in pre-pandemic online surveys in 2017 and 2018, we collected an April 2020 wave of the survey and showed that overall preferences for efficiency, equity and self-interest were remarkably stable before and after the pandemic outbreak. We hope this offers policy makers reassurance that once these preferences have been elicited from a representative sample of the population, they need not be re-estimated after important contextual changes.

Environmental control of social goals: using Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer to test cue-based pro-self and pro-social outcome responses.

A large amount of literature demonstrates that social behaviour can be triggered by environmental cues. A long-standing debate involves the question of whether such stimuli trigger behaviour directly (i.e. habits) or whether these effects mediate goals. As studies on automatic goal pursuit typically use real-world cues that are already associated with the behaviour and potentially the goal, it is impossible to make strong claims about the nature of the effects. In the present paper, we use a paradigm inspired by the Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) literature to examine how the environment can trigger goal-directed behaviour. Building on the essence of pro-self and pro-social motives in humans, two experiments explored the PIT effect when the outcomes were framed in terms of self- versus other-interest. Participants performed actions to earn money for themselves or a charity. Each outcome was linked to a different cue. The results showed that a cue predictive of self-interest outcomes facilitated responses instrumental in gaining the outcome, while such specific PIT effect for other-interest outcomes only emerged when participants were free to donate the money. We briefly discuss these findings reflecting on whether the PIT effect in our paradigm is indeed sensitive to the value of social goals.

COVID-19 vaccine apartheid and the failure of global cooperation.

The equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines is one of the most important tests of global cooperation that the world has faced in recent decades. Collectively, global leaders failed that crucible abysmally, creating a 'vaccine apartheid' that divided the world according to income into countries with widespread access and those without. Why, given that leaders were fully aware of the risks and injustice of vaccine inequity, did governments of wealthy countries hoard doses, impede the expansion of vaccine manufacturing and otherwise prevent equitable access to vaccines? We argue that their decisions to act selfishly are best explained by governments' accountability to domestic constituencies, their lack of leadership and commitment to multilateralism and their adoption of short-term perspectives, as well as their unwillingness to curb the influence of profit-oriented global pharmaceutical companies and, to a certain extent, of an additional private actor, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Emotional foundations of the market: Sympathy and self-interest.

Sociology shows the role of emotions in economic life. Sympathy and self-interest are crucial individual dispositions to explain the social behavior that shapes market institutions. Adam Smith emphasized the importance that sympathy has in the achievement of stability in social interactions that foster market society. On the other hand, Max Weber argued that disciplined self-interest is essential for the accumulation of capital. Although their analyses differed in some aspects, both Smith and Weber considered emotions to be the key to understanding the moral values that drive economic behavior. This paper will compare Smith's and Weber's theories of the relationship between emotions and the market. Finally, this paper will interpret sympathy and self-interest as the emotional foundations of the market, highlighting the fundamental role that emotions might have in economic analyses.

Greed: What Is It Good for?

What is greed good for? Greed is ubiquitous, suggesting that it must have some benefits, but it is also often condemned. In a representative sample of the Dutch population (N = 2,367, 51.3% female, Mage = 54.06, SD = 17.90), we examined two questions. First, inspired by Eriksson et al., we studied whether greedy people generate more personal and household income (economic outcomes), have more sexual partners, longer relationships, and more offspring (evolutionary outcomes), and are more satisfied in life (psychological outcomes). We found that greedy individuals had higher economic outcomes, mixed evolutionary outcomes, and lower psychological outcomes. Second, we compared greed and self-interest. We found that they differed in terms of economic outcomes, and partly in terms of evolutionary outcomes, but that they were similar in terms of psychological outcomes. This research provides insights into what greed is and does. Directions for further research are discussed.

Reciprocity versus Self-Interest in a Competitive Interaction Context: An Experimental Study.

In social interactions, the reciprocity norm implies to adjust one's behavior to that of the other agents. Conversely, behaving according to self-interest involves taking into account the reciprocity principle only if it does not hinder the achievement of one's goals. However, reciprocity and self-interest may conflict with each other, as when returning a kind action involves sacrificing the possibility to achieve a personal objective. The conflict could be exacerbated by some contextual factors, such as competitive pressures. This study investigated, in a competitive interaction context, which principle prevails when the two conflict. To this end, 276 unpaid participants (M = 138) took part in a two-stage experiment entailing a simulated interaction with a fictitious opponent, which behaved selfishly, fairly or altruistically toward them during the first stage. Participants had to decide whether or not to reciprocate the opponent's previous behavior, which in the critical experimental conditions conflicted with the goal to successfully complete the experiment. So, they were faced with a moral dilemma. Competition degree was manipulated to make the conflict between reciprocity and self-interest more or less harsh. Moreover, we tested whether the putative effect of experimental manipulation was mediated by changes in context-related affective states and personal beliefs about morality. Results showed that decision-making was principally influenced by reciprocity. Regardless of the competition degree, participants preferred to engage in reciprocal behavior even when this compromised their personal interest. Affective states and beliefs changed in response to the experimental manipulation, but they did not mediate the effect of the independent variable on decision-making.

Why they willingly complied: Ordinary people, the big environment, and the control of COVID-19 in China.

During the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese public consistently demonstrated a high level of compliance with some of the most restrictive infection control measures in the world. As a result, as of early 2022 China achieved remarkable control of a virus that had devastating effects in other parts of the world. In this article we take seriously the complexities of a simple question: Why did most urban Chinese citizens so willingly comply with the state's COVID-19 control measures for so long? Based on two years of ethnographic research conducted primarily in Shanghai, China between June 2020 and May 2022, we argue that the strong support the Chinese government enjoyed among China's self-described laobaixing ("ordinary people") in implementing its COVID-19 control measures emerged from a combination of self-interest, nationalistic pride, and "conscious indifference to transparency," rooted in ongoing critical evaluations of governmental competence. With these evaluations changing in the wake of new outbreaks in 2022, the future of China's zero-COVID policy is in jeopardy.

The Role of Self-Interest in Deliberation: A Theory of Deliberative Capital.

How do successful deliberations unfold? What happens when they unravel? In this article, I propose that we think of the dynamics of participant engagement within deliberation as series of self-interested and reciprocal investments in and divestments from deliberative capital. This article has three parts. First, I draw on the literatures on deliberative democracy and social capital to outline a theory of deliberative capital. I highlight the important role self-interest plays in the process of those initial investments - instances of engagement in positive deliberative behaviours. Second, drawing from my experience as a facilitator, I give an account of the particular indicators of investments and divestments that we might expect to see in a given deliberative engagement. Third, I briefly outline two innovative facilitation techniques that can be utilized at the beginning or during a deliberative process that trigger self-interest, which incentivizes investments and discourages divestments.

How many masks do you buy? A simple dilemma task to differentiate between individual and social rationality.

Prior measures on rationality overlook the individual differences in the weight people place on social rationality versus individual rationality. The current research develops and validates an individual-collective dilemma task (ICDT) to distinguish different rationality types. It was translated from a reality that, at the beginning of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, a global shortage of face masks occurred because of the jumping demand for masks as a precautionary measure. The ICDT asked participants to decide how many masks to buy in front of a shortfall of masks, which facilitated coping with a hypothetical epidemic outbreak. Based on the number of masks they selected, three rationality groups emerged. Individual rationalists preferred self-interest goals to goals of social interests; social rationalists prioritized social-interest goals; balancers assigned equal weight to both goals. The ICDT showed sound test-retest reliability and criterion-related, discriminant, and convergent validity. The present research contributes to the literature on rationality assessment and offers policy-makers a valid and reliable tool to understand the distribution of rationalists among the public. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-03338-x.

Dissecting the "do good and do well" phenomenon: The case of the UK's market for social investment.

The developing discourse around social investment and impact investing makes strong claims regarding the possibility of both furthering one's own interests while simultaneously acting for the benefit of others-"doing good and doing well". Such claims are central to UK- and US-centric attempts to reform capitalism in the face of multiple global crises. This article uses Foucault's writing on (neo)liberal governmentality to analyze a particular manifestation of the logic of "doing good and doing well": the attempt to build a market for social investment in the UK between 2010 and 2016, a project closely related to the development of the broader impact investment movement. Building on a close reading of Foucault's writing on the role of self-interest, it is argued that two incompatible versions of social investment are present within the development of the market: one (the "innovative version") that assumes purpose and profit are fully compatible, and one (the "principled version") that assumes it is important to maintain a boundary between them. The relevance of these findings and the approach used is discussed in relation to the social studies of market, and ongoing efforts to develop a critique of "doing good and doing well".

Help yourself by helping others: self-interest in appeals for Russian famine relief, 1921-23.

The hypothesis of psychological egoism is a commonplace in disciplines like economics, psychology, and biology. As an explanatory model it includes prosocial behaviour such as providing aid for distant strangers. But the inclusion of self-interest in humanitarian appeals can prove difficult because the moral economy of charitable work is regulated by different standards than the liberal market economy. This paper analyses the use of self-interest in appeals for humanitarian aid during the Russian famine of 1921-23 through the lens of modern philanthropic studies, while simultaneously assessing theories of philanthropic behaviour from a historical perspective. It points out the need for the systematic inclusion of historical experience in philanthropic research and concludes that the specific conditions surrounding the international campaign favoured the widespread use of appeals to donors' self-interest. An ideal-typical categorisation of such appeals into four groups-national, economic, group-specific, and psychological-is proposed as an analytical tool for similar studies.

Belief in Altruistic Motives Predicts Prosocial Actions and Inferences.

Are humans ever truly altruistic? Or are all actions, however noble, ultimately motivated by self-interest? Psychologists and philosophers have long grappled with this question, but few have considered laypeople's beliefs about the nature of prosocial motives. Here we examine these beliefs and their social correlates across two experiments (N = 445). We find that people tend to believe humans can be, and frequently are, altruistically motivated-echoing prior work. Moreover, people who more strongly believe in altruistic motives act more prosocially themselves-for instance, sacrificing greater amounts of money and time to help others-a relationship that holds even when controlling for trait empathy. People who believe in altruistic motives also judge other prosocial agents to be more genuinely kind, especially when agents' motives are ambiguous. Lastly, people independently show a self-serving bias-believing their own motives for prosociality are more often altruistic than others'. Overall, this work suggests that believing in altruistic motives predicts the extent to which people both see altruism and act prosocially, possibly reflecting the self-fulfilling nature of such lay theories.

A Qualitative Study on Children's Digital Media Use and Parents' Self-interest.

This qualitative study provides insight into the role of parents' self-interest in digital media use of children in different age groups. We conducted 31 semi-structured interviews with fathers/mothers of children aged 3-16 years who were recruited via targeted sampling. A deductive and inductive content analysis was applied. Results show that parents' self-interest in letting children use digital media includes being able to do other tasks without being bothered, having some me-time, managing children's behavior, avoiding discussions, having moments to use digital media themselves and spending quality-time together. In addition, we found that the manner in which parents let children use digital media out of self-interest seems to depend on age. With younger children, parents initiate digital media use or set times at which children are allowed to use digital media. With older children, parents use a passive manner by omitting restrictive responses to their children's media use. Current findings can be used to inform interventions aimed at reducing children's screen time.

Gift Game Metatheory: Social Interaction and Interpersonal Growth.

This paper analyzes Game Theory (GT) from the point of view of moral psychology and makes explicit some of its assumptions regarding the human person as a moral agent, as well as the ends of human action, and reciprocity. Using a largely philosophical methodology, we will argue that GT assumes an instrumental form of rationality underpinned by a logic of self-interest, hence placing individuals, communities, and their social practices in service of external goods and their maximization. Because of this, GT is not adequate to describe the entirety of human social existence and interaction. Nevertheless, by revealing these assumptions, GT can be amplified with another form of rationality based on realist ethics and a personalist anthropology reinforced by the logic of gift. This rationality values the singularity of each person as a holistic unity, as the center of the social realm and as an end in herself called to growth and flourishing with others, nurturing the human community through giving and receiving. We will thus provide a wider philosophical framework for GT with a series of non-mathematical axioms of what can be called a Game Metatheory (GMt). These axioms refer to society as a complex system, not to particular interactions. GMt axioms are not a model of social games, but rather an axiomatic description of social life as a game, revealing its systematic character, complexity, and possible deterioration.

Vaccine alliance building blocks: a conjoint experiment on popular support for international COVID-19 cooperation formats.

The design principles of institutions that visibly and significantly affect citizens' lives are likely to be politically salient. Popular support for these principles is in turn crucial for institutional viability and effectiveness. Transboundary pandemics are a case in point. Understanding citizens' preferences regarding the design of international alliances set up to mass-produce and distribute vaccines is likely to determine citizens' subsequent cooperation with vaccination campaigns. This study explores Germans' preferences for international COVID-19 vaccine alliance design principles. We conducted a conjoint experiment at a recurring cognitive moment in many pandemics' cycles, between the initial outbreak and a more devastating but still-unknown second wave, when infection rates were very low, yet no policy solutions had been developed. We analyzed preferences regarding four building blocks: (1) alliance composition (size; EU-centrism), (2) alliance distribution rules (joining cost; vaccine allocation), (3) vaccine nationalism (cost per German household; coverage in Germany) and (4) vaccine producer confidence (origin; type). Distribution rules, political ideology and personal perceptions of pandemic threat matter little. But a larger alliance size and dominant EU-country composition increase alliance support. And vaccine nationalism is key: support increases with both lower costs and larger coverage for own-nation citizens. Moreover, support goes down for Chinese and American producers and increases for Swiss and especially own-nation producers. In sum, a realist and technocratic outlook is warranted at the cognitive stage in pandemic cycles when no solutions have been found, yet the worst already seems to be over, as national self-interest reigns supreme in popular attitudes. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11077-021-09435-1.

Spanish Adaptation of the Self- and Other-Interest Inventory in Academic Settings.

In the study of human motivations, self-interest is often seen as a determining factor and opposed to other-interest. Recently a new conceptualization has been proposed in which both interests can occur at the same time. In order to measure these constructs, the Self-and Other-Interest Inventory (SOII; Gerbasi & Prentice, 2013) was created, which has one version for adults and one for students. Due to the absence of similar measurement instruments in Spain, the aim of this work is to adapt the SOII to Spanish university students. Several studies were conducted. First, the construct was analyzed through rational-analytical procedures. Second, the items were translated following an iterative forward-translation design. Finally, evidence of validity was obtained through analytical procedures. Specifically, two pilot studies were carried out in which two independent samples of Spanish students participated (N1 = 119; N2 = 165). In both studies descriptive analyzes of the items were performed, reliability was estimated and the factor structure of the SOII was explored from an exploratory factor analysis. The results showed adequate reliability and a two-factor solution consistent with the original.