The Effect of Ingroup vs. Outgroup Members' Behavior on Charity Preference: A Drift-Diffusion Model Approach
Providing potential donors with information about the behavior of others (i.e., social information) is an increasingly used strategy to nudge prosocial decision-making. In the present study, we investigated the effect of ingroup vs. outgroup information on participants' charity preferences by a...
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Published in | Frontiers in psychology Vol. 13; p. 854747 |
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Main Authors | , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Frontiers Media S.A
27.05.2022
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Providing potential donors with information about the behavior of others (i.e., social information) is an increasingly used strategy to nudge prosocial decision-making. In the present study, we investigated the effect of ingroup vs. outgroup information on participants' charity preferences by applying a Drift Diffusion Model (DDM) approach. In a joint evaluation scenario, we manipulated different levels of ingroup/outgroup preference ratios for two charities within subjects. Every subject was presented with three stimulus types (i.e., high, medium, and low ingroup ratio) randomized in 294 trials divided into six blocks. We expected that for stimuli with a high ingroup/outgroup ratio, participants should more often and faster decide for the ingroup's most favored charity. We expected that the speed of evidence accumulation will be higher the larger the ingroup/outgroup ratio. Additionally, we investigated whether variations in model parameters can explain individual differences in participants' behaviors. Our results showed that people generally followed ingroup members' preferences when deciding for a charity. However, on finding an unexpected pattern in our results, we conducted
post-hoc
analyses which revealed two different behavioral strategies used by participants. Based on participants' decisions, we classified them into “equality driven” individuals who preferred stimuli with the least difference between ingroup and outgroup percentages or “ingroup driven” individuals who favored stimuli with the highest ingroup/outgroup ratio. Results are discussed in line with relevant literature, and implications for practitioners are given. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 This article was submitted to Cognition, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology These authors have contributed equally to this work Reviewed by: Milica Mormann, Southern Methodist University, United States; Andre Luzardo, Boston University, United States Edited by: Gustav Tinghög, Linköping University, Sweden |
ISSN: | 1664-1078 1664-1078 |
DOI: | 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.854747 |