From good institutions to generous citizens: Top-down incentives to cooperate promote subsequent prosociality but not norm enforcement.

ABSTRACT: What makes people willing to pay costs to help others, and to punish others' selfishness? Why does the extent of such behaviors vary markedly across cultures? To shed light on these questions, we explore the role of formal institutions in shaping individuals' prosociality and punishment. In Study 1 (N=707), American participants who reported living under higher quality cooperation-enforcing institutions (police and courts) gave significantly more in a Dictator Game (DG), but did not punish significantly more in a Third-Party Punishment Game (TPPG). In Study 1R (N=1705), we replicated the positive relationship between reported institutional quality and DG giving observed in Study 1. In Study 2 (N=516), we experimentally manipulated institutional quality in a repeated Public Goods Game with

SUBMITTER: Stagnaro MN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5875418 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature