An epidemic context elicits more prosocial decision-making in an intergroup social dilemma

Rychlowska, Magdalena, van der Schalk, Job ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7968-4721 and Manstead, Antony S. R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7540-2096 2022. An epidemic context elicits more prosocial decision-making in an intergroup social dilemma. Scientific Reports 12 (1) , 18974. 10.1038/s41598-022-22187-z

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Abstract

Societal challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic have the quality of a social dilemma, in that they compel people to choose between acting in their own interests or the interests of a larger collective. Empirical evidence shows that the choices people make in a social dilemma are influenced by how this decision is framed. In four studies, we examined how context of an epidemic influences resource allocation decisions in a nested social dilemma task, where participants share resources between themselves, their subgroup, and a larger collective. Participants consistently allocated more resources to the collective in the context of the Ebola epidemic than in the context of a neighborhood improvement project, and these choices were strongly associated with prescriptive social norms. Together, the findings provide an experimental demonstration that the context of a quickly spreading disease encourages people to act more prosocially.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Psychology
Additional Information:	License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, Type: open-access
Publisher:	Nature Research
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	22 November 2022
Date of Acceptance:	11 October 2022
Last Modified:	17 May 2023 20:58
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/154418

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