Altruism and social integration

We report on a two-stage experiment in which (i) we first elicit the social network within a section of undergraduate students and (ii) we then measure their altruistic attitudes by means of a standard Dictator game. We observe that more socially integrated subjects are also more altruistic, as betw...

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Published inGames and economic behavior Vol. 69; no. 2; pp. 249 - 257
Main Authors Brañas-Garza, Pablo, Cobo-Reyes, Ramón, Espinosa, María Paz, Jiménez, Natalia, Kovárík, Jaromír
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Duluth Elsevier Inc 01.07.2010
Elsevier
Academic Press
SeriesGames and Economic Behavior
Subjects
Altruism
Altruism Centrality Social network experiments
Altruismus
Centrality
College students
Diktatur
Economic psychology
Experimental economics
Game theory
Netzwerk
Social integration
Social network experiments
Social networks
Soziales Netzwerk
Spanien
Spieltheorie
Student
Student attitudes
Students
Studierende
Studies
D85
Social network experiments
Altruism
C93
Centrality
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Summary:We report on a two-stage experiment in which (i) we first elicit the social network within a section of undergraduate students and (ii) we then measure their altruistic attitudes by means of a standard Dictator game. We observe that more socially integrated subjects are also more altruistic, as betweenness centrality and reciprocal degree are positively correlated with the level of giving, even after controlling for framing and social distance, which have been shown to significantly affect giving in previous studies. Our findings suggest that social distance and social integration are complementary determinants of altruistic behavior.
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ISSN:0899-8256
1090-2473
DOI:10.1016/j.geb.2009.10.014