The value of sociality

Abstract

Federation. AbstractPurpose -This paper aims to study the value of sociality. Recent experimental evidence has brought to light that the assumptions of the Prospect Theory by Kahneman and Tversky do not hold in the proposed substantive domain of "sociality". In particular, the desire to be a part of the social environment, i.e. the environment where individuals make decisions among their peers, is not contingent on the framing. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that humans are "social animals" for adaptive reasons. However, entering a social relationship is inherently risky. Therefore, it is extremely important to know how much people value "sociality", when the social outcomes are valued more than material outcomes and what kinds of adaptations people use. Design/methodology/approach -We develop a new theory and propose the general utility function that features "sociality" component. We test the theory in the laboratory experiments carried out in several countries.Findings -Our results suggest that when stakes are low the theory of "sociality" is successful in predicting individual decisions: on average, people do value "sociality" and it surpasses the monetary loss. Originality/value -The main contribution of this paper is the breakdown of the risk attitudes under low stakes and individual level of decision-making. Another advancement is the ability to formalize the social utility or the theory of "sociality" in an economic model; we use general utility function that we define both on the outcomes and on the process of the decision-making itself and test in laboratory studies.

Impact of Short Social Training on Prosocial Behaviors: An fMRI Study

“…Many studies see DLPFC as a contributor to rational decision-making in social situations. Although cooperation in the PD game is seen by many as irrational, the theory of sociality ( Lukinova et al, 2014 ; Berkman et al, 2015 ) provides a rational explanation for such behavior by adding an economic component to the subject’s utility function in the social context. Thus, activation in the Cooperation contrast can be attributed to another demonstration of sociality at work, where brain processes cooperation as a rational decision.…”

“…Participants are introduced in groups creating group differentiation, which easily satisfies the minimal group requirement ( Tajfel, 1978 ). In line with Social Identity Theory we assert some esteem or value is gained by boosting the group (or derogating the outgroup; Tajfel and Turner, 1979 ) and, in turn, this additional value ( Lukinova et al, 2014 ) plays a decisive role in encouraging prosocial actions. Building upon results of our behavioral work, we now report on a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments that utilize the fMRI technology in combination with socialization and well-known economic games to measure whether and how sociality alters the functional activation of and connectivity between the social cognition network and the valuation network in the brain.…”

“…Recent efforts to unite these traditions have proven fruitful in delivering theoretical insights and a model-based precision to the study of economic behavior in a realistic social context ( Akerlof and Kranton, 2000 , 2010 ; Perc and Szolnoki, 2010 ; Perc et al, 2013 ; Lukinova et al, 2014 ; Berkman et al, 2015 ). One behavioral study ( Berkman et al, 2015 ) confirmed that socialization induces prosocial behavior in economic games due to sociality.…”

Eye Gaze Patterns of Decision Process in Prosocial Behavior

“…Moreover, the evidence of social factor influence on a physiological basis of cognitive processes is shown (Do et al, 2019). For better understanding eye-movement patterns' association with decision strategy, we applied a social psychology minimal group paradigm and the theory of sociality (Lukinova et al, 2014) to enhance participants' strategic behavior and, particularly, its prosocial aspect. Generally, prosocial, cooperative behavior is defined as a contributors' actions that benefit other people, the group, or society (Baumsteiger, 2019;Thielmann et al, 2020).…”

Sociality as a Natural Mechanism of Public Goods Provision

“…Here, we marry some of the rich models of social behavior taken from social psychology with decision modeling techniques from behavioral economics. Recent efforts to unite these two traditions have proven fruitful in delivering theoretical insights and model-based precisions for studying economic behavior in a realistic social context [ 1 , 2 ]. Specifically, we use a classic “minimal group” paradigm from social psychology to induce a sense of social connectedness in our experimental subjects.…”