Work

Individuals of high socioeconomic status are altruistic in sharing money but egoistic in sharing time

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: The questions of whether and how socioeconomic status (SES) predicts prosocial behavior have sparked an interest from different disciplines, yet experimental evidence is inconclusive. We embedded two types of dictator games in a web survey with 7772 participants from Germany, Poland, Sweden, and the US. Each participant was asked to split a sum of money and a fixed amount of time between themself and a recipient. While higher-SES individuals are more generous than lower-SES individuals in the money game, they are more egoistic in the time game. In addition, the SES of the recipient matters more in the money game than in the time game. These results point towards the relevancy of a situationally contingent social norm of redistribution in studying the relationship between SES and prosocial behavior.

Source: Scientific Reports

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-14800-y

Authors: Ulf Liebe, Nicole Schwitter, Andreas Tutić

Institutions: University of Warwick, University of Bergen

Language: English

Topic: Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies

Subfield: Safety Research

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,190