Generous to the individual, selfish to the masses

Alós-Ferrer, C., García-Segarra, J. & Ritschel, A. Generous to the individual, selfish to the masses. Nat Hum Behav (2021) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01170-0

Commentary

Economic selfishness, which has been exposed by many corporate scandals, conflicts with empirical results from behavioral economics, suggesting that there are high levels of prosocial behavior and low levels of cheating in bilateral interactions.

The researchers designed the "Big Robber" game to confirm this. In this game, a "robber" can make a large personal profit by appropriating the proceeds of a large group of "victims".

In a large experiment (N = 640), more than half of all robbers took as much as possible, and most people tended not to turn down a robbery. However, the same participants simultaneously exhibited prosocial behavior in the games of Dictator, Ultimatum, and Trust.

Thus, it was explained that decisions large enough to affect large groups and provide direct empirical evidence that individual selfishness is compatible with sociability in bilateral low-stakes interactions.

This explains why humans can be simultaneously generous to others and selfish to larger groups. In other words, the game is able to explain the actions of bankers towards corporations and towards individuals.