Human prosociality in the lab: The structure of prosocial behavior assessed with economic games and self-reports

Though prosocial behavior is crucial for societies to function its reliable scientific assessment in the lab is still a challenge. The present study integrated paradigms from diverse disciplines in order to identify the overall structure and sub-components of prosociality. To this end, participants (N=187) played anonymous one-shot versions of economic games such as the Dictator Game, the Trust Game, and the 2nd and 3rd Person Punishment Game, engaged in the Zürich Prosocial Game, completed a donation as well as social discounting task and filled in trait questionnaires typically employed to assess prosociality. Results of a factor analyses identified four independent factors: a factor ‘Prosocial Motivation’ comprises behaviors as diverse as helping, generosity, donations to NGOs, favoring equal distributions, and trust. Factor 2 ‘Readiness to punish’ reflects the inclination to punish violations of distribution norms and choose monetary distributions independent of social distance. Factor 3 ‘Strategizing’ describes the tendency to make decisions dependent on cost-benefit analyses. Finally, factor 4 “Self-Report Measures” is determined by the method of using trait questionnaires and reflects people’s personal view on their own prosociality. These findings reveal a more differentiated picture of human prosociality involving meaningful sub-components, one of them being clearly determined by the underlying methods. Such findings may have important implications for research on the determinants of prosociality ranging from genetics to development and plasticity research