Nobody's watching?

Haley, Kevin J.; Fessler, Daniel M. T.

doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.01.002

Cited by 858 publications

(277 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…[30]). Some authors have suggested that such cues match the input conditions for evolved mental mechanisms that detect when one's behaviour is observed [28]. Religious primes might likewise function as input for these mechanisms [17].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Wrath of God: religious primes and punishment

et al. 2010

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Recent evidence indicates that priming participants with religious concepts promotes prosocial sharing behaviour. In the present study, we investigated whether religious priming also promotes the costly punishment of unfair behaviour. A total of 304 participants played a punishment game. Before the punishment stage began, participants were subliminally primed with religion primes, secular punishment primes or control primes. We found that religious primes strongly increased the costly punishment of unfair behaviours for a subset of our participants-those who had previously donated to a religious organization. We discuss two proximate mechanisms potentially underpinning this effect. The first is a 'supernatural watcher' mechanism, whereby religious participants punish unfair behaviours when primed because they sense that not doing so will enrage or disappoint an observing supernatural agent. The second is a 'behavioural priming' mechanism, whereby religious primes activate cultural norms pertaining to fairness and its enforcement and occasion behaviour consistent with those norms. We conclude that our results are consistent with dual inheritance proposals about religion and cooperation, whereby religions harness the byproducts of genetically inherited cognitive mechanisms in ways that enhance the survival prospects of their adherents.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent studies suggest that even very subtle cues that one is being watched, such as stylized eyespots on a computer screen, can affect giving behaviour (e.g. [28,29]; cf. [30]).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wrath of God: religious primes and punishment

et al. 2010

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“…Thus, altruistic cooperation and punishment, they argue, stem from mental confusion due to the difficulty in avoiding detection when behaving anti-socially in our evolutionary past. Throughout most of the history of our species, they argue, hunter-gatherer societies offered little room for the sorts of anonymous interaction and covert behaviour found in modern society [75,76]. Because of our evolutionary past, they argue, modern humans are hyper-sensitive to even remote possibilities that their actions may be observed and their reputations sullied.…”

Section: Altruism Is An Emergent Property Of Human Gene -Culture Evolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gene–culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality

Gintis

2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

142

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Human characteristics are the product of gene-culture coevolution, which is an evolutionary dynamic involving the interaction of genes and culture over long time periods. Gene -culture coevolution is a special case of niche construction. Gene -culture coevolution is responsible for human other-regarding preferences, a taste for fairness, the capacity to empathize and salience of morality and character virtues.

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“…However, the fact that the future call was uncertain, and that if it did happen it would entail a conversation with a total stranger, suggests this is unlikely. Instead, it seems more plausible that the intervention acted on a nonconscious level, as in the eyespot studies (24,25). For example, the prospect of a follow-up might have activated feelings of accountability (30) or served as a reminder of future social interactions in which voting might be discussed (e.g., mental simulation).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, observability can affect contributions when the reputational consequences of one's choice have been entirely eliminated (22,23). An example is eyespots: simply displaying a picture of a face or an abstraction resembling a face increases contributions (24,25). Such effects imply that the psychology governing our reputations operates at the intuitive level (24)-that is, people do not necessarily deliberate over the reputational gains of every cooperative action, and instead rely on heuristics.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential follow-up increases private contributions to public goods

Rogers

Ternovski

Yoeli

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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People contribute more to public goods when their contributions are made more observable to others. We report an intervention that subtly increases the observability of public goods contributions when people are solicited privately and impersonally (e.g., mail, email, social media). This intervention is tested in a large-scale field experiment (n = 770,946) in which people are encouraged to vote through get-out-the-vote letters. We vary whether the letters include the message, "We may call you after the election to ask about your voting experience." Increasing the perceived observability of whether people vote by including that message increased the impact of the get-out-the-vote letters by more than the entire effect of a typical get-out-the-vote letter. This technique for increasing perceived observability can be replicated whenever public goods solicitations are made in private.H ow can we increase contributions to public goods-to get donors to give more to charity, citizens to vote, households to consume less energy, drivers to carpool, and patients to take all of their antibiotics? One of the best ways is to make contributions more observable (1, 2), as demonstrated by a large body of laboratory experiments (3-9) and a growing body of field experiments (for a review, see ref.2) in a variety of settings, including energy conservation (10), blood donations (11), national park contributions (12), and voting (13).Observability increases contributions to public goods such as voting or charitable giving because observability allows contributions to affect reputations. Individuals who are observed to have contributed can be held in good standing and rewarded in subsequent relationships, either when others are more likely to engage them in a relationship in the first place (this is called partner choice; e.g., refs. 14 and 15) or when others are more cooperative with them during an existing relationship (this is called indirect reciprocity; e.g., refs. 16-21). And, individuals who are observed to not contribute can be held in poor standing.Even subtle cues of observability can increase contributions. In fact, observability can affect contributions when the reputational consequences of one's choice have been entirely eliminated (22,23). An example is eyespots: simply displaying a picture of a face or an abstraction resembling a face increases contributions (24, 25). Such effects imply that the psychology governing our reputations operates at the intuitive level (24)-that is, people do not necessarily deliberate over the reputational gains of every cooperative action, and instead rely on heuristics. Such an intuitive psychology might develop if the heuristics usually work (26,27). For example, if seeing something that looks like a face is usually an accurate indication that someone is watching, then it may pay to give more whenever in the presence of something that looks like a face, even though a clever researcher may exploit this heuristic to induce people into giving a little more in an experiment. Moreover, there...

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Nobody's watching?

Cited by 858 publications

References 30 publications

Wrath of God: religious primes and punishment

Wrath of God: religious primes and punishment

Gene–culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality

Potential follow-up increases private contributions to public goods

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