Reluctant Pro-sociality

Jason Dana (Assistant Professor, Psychology, University of Pennsylvania)

This proposal extends work that shows that people will ignore free information about others’ payoffs. Remaining “strategically ignorant” might give people moral license to choose a selfish option, given their lack of knowledge about the effect of their choice on others. This work presents strong challenges to “social preference” models. The present work looks at the effects of paying choosers (Dictators, in this case) to look at (others’) payoff information.