Helping other people, sharing, donating, cooperating… Prosocial behavior is key in our society. And yet, we can wonder what drives us to be generous towards one another. Is our generosity guided more by guilt and the desire to see ourselves as good people? Or is it induced by shame and the need to be seen as good by others?
In her latest research, TSE assistant professor Catherine Molho, addresses this issue. Catherine is a psychologist studying human cooperation, social norms, and the role of emotion in decision-making.
Her study, published in Nature Human Behavior, last August, is based on a large-scale experiment across 20 culturally diverse countries in five continents, with nearly 8,000 participants.
Powerful impact of transparency
With her co-authors, they found that guilt was the stronger driver of prosociality. The findings echo real-world dilemmas, where people can easily avoid knowing the negative externalities of their actions when they make a decision. They may use ignorance as an excuse for self-serving behavior, even when information is readily available. But when clearly informed, they behave more prosocially.
“Our results suggest that policy interventions that emphasize transparency can have a powerful impact. Whether it’s food, fashion, or travel, making the social and environmental costs of our choices more transparent could help steer behavior toward the common good”, explains Catherine.
More about the experiment:
The participants made simple economic choices that affected both their own earnings and those of anonymous strangers. They could pick a selfish option (best for them, worse for the stranger) or a prosocial one (equally good for both, but slightly costlier for themselves).
Then, we introduced two key twists. First, in some cases, participants could choose to avoid learning how their decisions would affect others, and with it the guilt of knowingly harming someone. Second, we sometimes made decisions public, introducing the possibility of shame.
When participants were fully informed, they chose the prosocial option 60% of the time. But when they could opt out of learning about the consequences of their actions, this fell to just 41%—even though obtaining information was free.
Catherine is an assistant professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Toulouse School of Economics and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. Her research focuses on key questions about cooperation and moral decision-making.
This year, she was awarded the Jeunes Chercheuses grant from the French National Agency, for her project “ENFORCE”, which aims at understanding what shapes cooperative and punitive decisions.
Catherine is available for phone or Zoom interview in English. If you're interested, please reach out to TSE Press Officer, Caroline Pain caroline.pain@tse-fr.eu
