Judgment and Decision Making (Jan 2022)
Affect and prosocial behavior: The role of decision mode and individual processing style
Abstract
We study the effects of experimental manipulation of decision mode (rational ``brain'' vs. affective ``heart'') and individual difference in processing styles (intuition vs. deliberation) on prosocial behavior. In a survey experiment with a diverse sample of the Swedish population (n = 1,828), we elicited the individuals’ processing style and we experimentally manipulated reliance on affect or reason, regardless of subjects' preferred mode. Prosocial behavior was measured across a series of commonly used and incentivized games (prisoner’s dilemma game, public goods game, trust game, dictator game). Our results show that prosocial behavior increased for the affective (``heart'') decision mode. Further, individual differences in processing style did not predict prosocial behavior and did not interact with the experimental manipulation.
