Do you share your personally useless information if others may benefit from it?

Abstract

Information is personally useless if its beholder cannot individually benefit from it further unless she shares it with those who can exploit that information to increase their mutual outcome. We study sharing such information in a non-strategic and non-competitive setting, where selfish and cooperative motives align. Although sharing information is cost-free and results in expected mutual payoff, almost all of the subjects show some negative sensitivities toward sharing information, and it is more severe in the introvert subjects. The subjects’ level of cooperation, sensitivity to the fairness of opportunities, and fairness of outcomes do not explain this monetarily irrational behavior. However, computational modeling suggests that this irrationality arises because of high selfishness and excessive subjective value of personally useless information, in the face of low other-regarding motives, that necessitate over-attainable personal benefit to drive sharing. Interestingly, other-regarding element and sensitivity to the value of information are correlated with the subjects’ belief about others’ cooperation in Public Goods Game and their extraversion in Big5 personality traits, respectively. These results point at the necessity of cognitive interventions to attenuate the subjective value of personally useless information to increase sharing in favor of more benefits for others and self, especially for introvert subjects and those that perceive others less cooperative.