Selflessness takes time: altruistic (but not cooperative) prosocial behavior increases with decision time

2018-07-01Are people spontaneously selfless or self-serving? A prominent model of prosociality—the Social Heuristics Hypothesis (SHH)—suggests people are impulsively selfless, and with time people’s behavior becomes more self-interested. This model appears to be supported by findings that the less time people take to decide how to act in cooperation games, the more money they give to others. Presumably, this pattern exists because people internalize the generally positive consequences of everyday cooperation, thus automatizing prosociality. However, unlike non-altruistic, or “contingent” prosociality (other-benefiting behavior with considerable positive consequences to oneself), altruism, or “non-contingent” prosociality (other-benefiting behavior that is costly but bears no direct profit to oneself) should not become automatized, given that such behavior is unlikely to have clear and immediate self-interested consequences. With this in mind, here I propose a model of decision time and prosocial behavior which suggests that though some forms of prosocial behavior might decrease as a function of decision time, decision time should increase non-contingent behavior. I also propose that time manipulations influence non-contingent prosociality due to their impact on moral motivation. These hypotheses were supported by two meta-analyses and seven experiments including multiple manipulations of time pressure and task structure (N = 9,332, Mdn = 426). Overall, these studies indicate that though contingent prosociality does not increase with time, multiple forms of non-contingent prosociality do, specifically because with decision time comes increased moral motivation. These studies suggest necessary revisions to the SHH, as 17 of the 18 key analyses conducted in this paper ran counter to it