A systematic review on social dilemmas and moral emotions

<p>The growing interest in the role of emotions in behavioral economics, and the absence of reviews on this subject have motivated this work, which purpose was analyze the empirical evidence on the role of moral emotions in social dilemmas situations. The reviewed articles (n= 17) were obtained from EBSCO, OVID and ScienceDirect. We analyzed the following aspects: objectives, sample, experimental game or task, and results. A group of studies was focused on the influence of moral emotions on cooperation, using mainly the Give-Some game or the Ultimatum Game. Another group of studies was focused on the role of empathy-altruism in helping behaviors, using distribution tasks. The analysis of results shows that guilt and shame increase the tendency to cooperate, while emotions like anger and disgust diminish it. Furthermore, the induction of empathy promoted altruistic behavior and helping behaviors. This review provides useful elements to be considered in future research.