Observing others give & take: A computational account of bystanders' feelings and actions.

ABSTRACT: Social interactions influence people's feelings and behavior. Here, we propose that a person's well-being is influenced not only by interactions they experience themselves, but also by those they observe. In particular, we test and quantify the influence of observed selfishness and observed inequality on a bystanders' feelings and non-costly punishment decisions. We developed computational models that relate others' (un)selfish acts to observers' emotional reactions and punishment decisions. These characterize the rules by which others' interactions are transformed into bystanders' reactions, and successfully predict those reactions in out-of-sample participants. The models highlight the impact of two social values-'selfishness aversion' and 'inequality aversion'. As for the latter we find

SUBMITTER: Blain B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9098039 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature