š„³ Many thanks to the great team involved in this: Luke Priestley, @drjocutler.bsky.social, Tabitha Hogg, Neil Garrett, @brainapps.bsky.social, Matthew Rushworth, & @thepsychologist.bsky.social
Overall, we find that our immediate environment has a significant impact when making prosocial decisions, and that poorer environments can drive greater generosity.
We found that:
ā¢ People were more willing to help in poor environments.
ā¢ Opportunity costs were distinctly encoded for self and other, and for both environments.
ā¢ Those higher in empathy and utilitarian thinking were generally more likely to stop to help in both environments.
Across 3 studies (n=500+), we tested how willing people were to stop a movie to put in effort to help someone else while we changed the richness of the environment. In poor environments, opportunities to help were generally lower in quality, whereas in rich environments, they were generally higher.
We wondered whether these same mechanisms drive our decisions for when we stop to help other people, and if they did so more strongly than decisions for when to help ourselves. š¤