Altruism, fast and slow? Evidence from a meta-analysis and a new experiment

Fromell, Hanna; Nosenzo, Daniele; Owens, Trudy

Abstract

Can we use the lens of dual-system theories to explain altruistic behavior? In recent years this question has attracted the interest of both economists and psychologists. We contribute to this emerging literature by reporting the results of a meta-study of the literature and a new experiment. Our meta-study is based on 22 experimental studies conducted with more than 12,000 subjects. We show that the overall effect of manipulating cognitive resources to promote the "intuitive" system at the expense of the "deliberative" system is very close to zero. One reason for this null result could be that promoting intuition has heterogeneous effects on altruism across different subgroups of subjects or contexts. Another reason could be that there simply is no real effect and that previously reported single results are false positives. We explore the role of heterogeneity both by performing a mediator analysis of the meta-analytic effect and by conducting a new experiment designed to circumvent the issue of potential heterogeneity in the direction of the effect of promoting intuition. In both cases, we find little evidence that heterogeneity explains the absence of an overall effect of intuition on altruism. Taken together, our results offer little support for dual-system theories of altruistic behavior.

Citation

Fromell, H., Nosenzo, D., & Owens, T. (2020). Altruism, fast and slow? Evidence from a meta-analysis and a new experiment. Experimental Economics, 23, 979–1001. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-020-09645-z

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 22, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Feb 25, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-12
• Deposit Date: Feb 4, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 25, 2020
• Journal: Experimental Economics
• Print ISSN: 1386-4157
• Electronic ISSN: 1573-6938
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 23
• Pages: 979–1001
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-020-09645-z
• Keywords: altruism; giving; dictator game; dual-system model; intuition; deliberation; self- control; willpower; depletion; Stroop task JEL Classification: C91
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3887797
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10683-020-09645-z
• Additional Information: Received: 30 November 2018; Revised: 15 January 2020; Accepted: 22 January 2020; First Online: 25 February 2020