| 1. |
- Andersson, Per A, 1986-
(författare)
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Norms in Prosocial Decisions : The Role of Observability, Avoidance, and Conditionality
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Prosocial behaviors benefit other people and range from donations to charity to behavior limiting the spread of disease, such as masking and vaccination. The overarching purpose of this thesis was to contribute to our understanding of how social norms and conformity affect prosocial behavior. Here, three norm-related factors that affect such prosocial behavior were investigated: observability, avoidance and conditionality. Observability concerns whether a person is being observed during prosocial decisions, which can typically increase conformity to norms. Avoidance concerns whether a person avoids or seeks out knowledge about prosocial norms. Conditionality concerns the conditional nature of when behavior shifts occur in relation to others behavior. For instance, a person may want to follow a prosocial norm only if a very large majority adheres to it, or only if the goal of the norm is realistic to attain. Paper I focused on observability of prosocial decisions. Making decisions while knowing they would be shown to others increased prosocial behavior in the form of cooperation in a Public Goods Game, and preferences for deontological choices in moral dilemmas, but not donations given to charity. Paper II examined the existence of avoidance behavior regarding social norm about donations. Such norm avoiders appeared to be comprised of both prosocial and less prosocial individuals. Paper III investigated the interplay between descriptive (what people do) and injunctive (what one should do) norms in regards to masking during COVID-19. Paper IV then explored how varying the goal set for a prosocial norm affects willingness to try to achieve the goal, in the context of thresholds for herd immunity and vaccines for COVID-19. Some individuals were demotivated by seeing a higher goal as harder to achieve and others were motivated by believing a higher goal to lead to more people getting vaccinated. Taken together, these papers point to the inherent complexity of how norms relate to prosocial behavior, and suggest relevant aspects to consider when wanting to promote prosocial behavior.
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| 2. |
- Andersson, Per A, 1986-, et al.
(författare)
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Prosocial and moral behavior under decision reveal in a public environment
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics. - : Elsevier. - 2214-8043 .- 2214-8051. ; 87
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- People may act differently in public environments due to actual reputation concerns, or due to the mere presence of others. Unlike previous studies on the influence of observability on prosocial behavior we control for the latter while manipulating the former, i.e. we control for implicit reputation concerns while manipulating explicit. We show that revealing decisions in public did not affect altruistic behavior, while it increased cooperation and made subjects less likely to make utilitarian judgments in sacrificial dilemmas (i.e., harming one to save many). Our findings are in line with theoretical models suggesting that people, at large, are averse to standing out in both positive and negative ways when it comes to altruistic giving. This "wallflower effect" does however not seem to extend to decisions on cooperation and moral judgments made in public.
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| 3. |
- Andersson, Per, et al.
(författare)
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Norm avoiders : The effect of optional descriptive norms on charitable donations
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. - : Wiley. - 0894-3257 .- 1099-0771. ; 35:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Knowing the descriptive norm concerning others prosociality could affect your behavior, but would you seek out or avoid such knowledge? This high-powered preregistered experiment explores the effect of both forced and optionally revealed descriptive norms on real monetary donations. These norms were established by learning the proportion of previous participants who had donated to a charitable organization that the respondent now was asked to donate to. For those learning about a norm, participants were more likely to donate if they were shown that a majority donates, compared with if they were shown that a minority donates. For the participants who were asked if they wanted to reveal the norm or not, we found that about half choose to reveal the norm. Those who avoided revealing the norm donated less frequently; both compared with revealers and with those who were forced to view the norm. However, these norm avoiders also donate a higher mean amount. Taken together, this hints at norm avoiders being composed of both altruistic and non-altruistic people, with fewer of those who are undecided. This type of norm avoidance may be more related to information avoidance motives rather than mere curiosity or reactance. The present findings can inspire further research into the motives of norm avoidance.
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| 4. |
- Aspernäs, Julia, et al.
(författare)
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Misperceptions in a post-truth world: Effects of subjectivism and cultural relativism on bullshit receptivity and conspiracist ideation
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Research in Personality. - : ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE. - 0092-6566 .- 1095-7251. ; 105
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This research investigated whether belief in truth relativism yields higher receptivity to misinformation. Two studies with representative samples from Sweden (Study 1, N = 1005) and the UK (Study 2, N = 417) disentangled two forms of truth relativism: subjectivism (truth is relative to subjective intuitions) and cultural relativism (truth is relative to cultural context). In Study 1, subjectivism was more strongly associated with receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit and conspiracy theories than cultural relativism was. In Study 2 (preregistered), subjectivism predicted higher receptivity to both forms of misinformation over and above effects of analytical and actively open-minded thinking, profoundness receptivity, ideology, and demographics; the unique effects of cultural relativism were in the opposite direction (Study 1) or non-significant (Study 2).
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| 5. |
- Aspernäs, Julia, et al.
(författare)
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Motivated formal reasoning : Ideological belief bias in syllogistic reasoning across diverse political issues
- 2023
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Ingår i: Thinking and Reasoning. - : Routledge; Taylor & Francis. - 1354-6783 .- 1464-0708. ; 29:1, s. 43-69
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study investigated ideological belief bias, and whether this effect is moderated by analytical thinking. A Swedish nationally representative sample (N = 1005) evaluated non-political and political syllogisms and were asked whether the conclusions followed logically from the premises. The correct response in the political syllogisms was aligned with either leftist or rightist political ideology. Political orientation predicted response accuracy for political but not non-political syllogisms. Overall, the participants correctly evaluated more syllogisms when the correct response was congruent with their ideology, particularly on hot-button issues (asylum to refugees, climate change, gender-neutral education, and school marketization). Analytical thinking predicted higher accuracy for syllogisms of any kind among leftists, but it predicted accuracy only for leftist and non-political syllogisms among rightists. This research contributes by refining a promising paradigm for studying politically motivated reasoning, demonstrating ideological belief bias outside of the United States across diverse political issues, and providing the first evidence that analytical thinking may reduce such bias.
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| 6. |
- Erlandsson, Arvid, et al.
(författare)
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Anticipated guilt for not helping and anticipated warm glow for helping are differently impacted by personal responsibility to help
- 2016
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Psychology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; 7:SEP
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- One important motivation for people behaving prosocially is that they want to avoid negative and obtain positive emotions. In the prosocial behavior literature however, the motivations to avoid negative emotions (e.g., guilt) and to approach positive emotions (e.g., warm glow) are rarely separated, and sometimes even aggregated into a single mood-management construct. The aim of this study was to investigate whether anticipated guilt if not helping and anticipated warm glow if helping are influenced similarly or differently when varying situational factors related to personal responsibility to help. Helping scenarios were created and pilot tests established that each helping scenario could be formulated both in a high-responsibility version and in a low-responsibility version. In Study 1 participants read high-responsibility and low-responsibility helping scenarios, and rated either their anticipated guilt if not helping or their anticipated warm glow if helping (i.e., separate evaluation). Study 2 was similar but here participants rated both their anticipated guilt if not helping and their anticipated warm glow if helping (i.e., joint evaluation). Anticipated guilt was clearly higher in the high-responsibility versions, but anticipated warm glow was unaffected (in Studies 1a and 1b), or even higher in the low-responsibility versions (Study 2). In Studies 3 (where anticipated guilt and warm glow were evaluated separately) and 4 (where they were evaluated jointly), personal responsibility to help was manipulated within-subjects. Anticipated guilt was again constantly higher in the high-responsibility versions but for many types of responsibility-manipulations, anticipated warm glow was higher in the low-responsibility versions. The results suggest that we anticipate guilt if not fulfilling our responsibility but that we anticipate warm glow primarily when doing over and beyond our responsibility. We argue that future studies investigating motivations for helping should measure both anticipated negative consequences for oneself if not helping, and anticipated positive consequences for oneself if helping.
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| 7. |
- Erlandsson, Arvid, et al.
(författare)
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Argument-inconsistency in charity appeals: Statistical information about the scope of the problem decrease helping toward a single identified victim but not helping toward many non-identified victims in a refugee crisis context
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Economic Psychology. - : ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV. - 0167-4870 .- 1872-7719. ; 56, s. 126-140
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It is known that both the characteristics of the victims one can help and the existence of victims one cannot help influence economic helping decisions in suboptimal ways. The aim of this study was to systematically test if these two aspects interact with each other. In Studies 1 and 2, we created hypothetical charity appeals related to the Syrian refugee crisis and factorially manipulated characteristics of victims possible to help (one identified child/nine non-identified children) and presence of statistical information about the scope and nature of the problem (information-box absent/present). We found a significant interaction effect both when using self-rated helping intention (Study 1), and when using actual donation behavior as the dependent variable (Study 2). Statistical information decreased helping intentions toward a single identified child but had no, or even a small positive effect on helping nine non-identified children. In Study 3, non-student participants reading a charity appeal with both a story about one identified child and statistical information donated less often than participants reading appeals with either only a story about one identified child or only statistical information. We suggest that both emotional arguments (e.g., a story and picture of an identified child in need) and analytical arguments (e.g., detailed statistical information about the scope and nature of the problem) can make us more motivated to help refugees, but that mixing different argument-types can make charity appeals internally inconsistent and decrease donations. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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| 8. |
- ERLANDSSON, ARVID, et al.
(författare)
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Attitudes and donation behavior toward positive and negative charity appeals
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1540-6997 .- 1049-5142. ; 30:4, s. 444-474
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article tries to clarify whether negative charity appeals (i.e., advertisements emphasizing the bad consequences of not helping) or positive charity appeals (i.e., advertisements emphasizing the good consequences of helping) are more effective. Previous literature does not provide a single answer to this question and we suggest that one contributing reason for this is that different studies have operationalized appeal effectiveness in different ways (e.g., actual behavior, self-rated helping intentions, or expressed attitudes about the ad or the organization). Results from four separate studies suggest that positive appeals are more effective in inducing favorable attitudes toward the ad and toward the organization but that negative appeals are more effective (in studies 1A and 1B) or at least equally effective (in studies 1C and 1D) in eliciting actual donations. Also, although people’s attitude toward the appeal (i.e., liking) was a good predictor for the expected effectiveness in increasing donation behavior (in Study 2), it was a poor predictor of actual donation behavior in all four main studies. These results cast doubt on marketing theories suggesting that attitudes toward an advertisement and toward the brand always lead to higher purchase behavior.
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| 9. |
- Erlandsson, Arvid, 1982-, et al.
(författare)
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Attitudes and donation behavior when reading positive and negative charity appeals
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing. - : Routledge. - 1049-5142 .- 1540-6997. ; 30:4, s. 444-474
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article tries to clarify whether negative charity appeals (i.e., advertisements emphasizing the bad consequences of not helping) or positive charity appeals (i.e., advertisements emphasizing the good consequences of helping) are more effective. Previous literature does not provide a single answer to this question and we suggest that one contributing reason for this is that different studies have operationalized appeal effectiveness in different ways (e.g., actual behavior, self-rated helping intentions, or expressed attitudes about the ad or the organization). Results from four separate studies suggest that positive appeals are more effective in inducing favorable attitudes toward the ad and toward the organization but that negative appeals are more effective (in studies 1A and 1B) or at least equally effective (in studies 1C and 1D) in eliciting actual donations. Also, although people’s attitude toward the appeal (i.e., liking) was a good predictor for the expected effectiveness in increasing donation behavior (in Study 2), it was a poor predictor of actual donation behavior in all four main studies. These results cast doubt on marketing theories suggesting that attitudes toward an advertisement and toward the brand always lead to higher purchase behavior.
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| 10. |
- Erlandsson, Arvid, et al.
(författare)
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Beneficiary effects in prosocial decision making: Understanding unequal valuations of lives
- 2023
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Ingår i: European Review of Social Psychology. - : ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD. - 1046-3283 .- 1479-277X.
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- To understand human prosocial behaviour, one must consider not only the helpers and the requesters, but also the characteristics of the beneficiaries. To this aim, this articles reviews research on beneficiary effects in prosocial decision making, which implies that some human lives are valued higher than others. We focus on eight beneficiary attributes that increase willingness to help: (1) Temporal proximity, (2) Young age, (3) Female gender, (4) Misery, (5) Innocence, (6) Ingroup, (7) Identifiability (8) High proportion. We demonstrate that different psychological mechanisms explain different beneficiary effects, that the size and direction of beneficiary effects varies as a function of response mode (separate evaluation, joint evaluation, or forced choice), and outcome measure (attitudes or helping behaviour). We propose that beneficiary attributes differ in their evaluability, justifiability, and prominence, and conclude by discussing theoretical, moral, and applied aspects of beneficiary effects.
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