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Nobody’s Watching? Subtle Cues Affect Generosity in an Anonymous Economic Game
Prosocial behavior, as defined by Eisenberg & Mussen (3), is the “voluntary actions that are intended to help or benefit an individual or a group of individuals.” It refers to the behavior of individuals that would contribute to the betterment of the society. In the study by Haley & Fessler (245), the opportunities for reputation formation plays a pivotal part in the continuance of cooperation and prosocial behavior of individuals in the society. The study asserts that prosocial behavior is maintained when an individual knows or have the ability to know the past actions of his/her fellow, because through this, they would be able to formulate precedent actions and responses in order to establish their reputations. Owing to the fact that subtle cues are interpreted in various ways depending on which person interprets it, there is an increasing argument on whether visual or physical cues, regardless if subtle or not, can really influence generosity in a person.
One of the experiments done in the study is the “Experimental Economic Games” whereas the participants were randomly seated in a computer laboratory having no direct contact or background of any form of communication from one another—they were all under anonymity. This was to find out whether the behavior changes when there is no visual or personal contact between individuals. The experimental design for the participants was rather crucial in the part of the methodology since the researches had to be extra careful in order to preserve the anonymity of the participants from one another. In accordance to the findings, auditory cues of presence of one another was parallel with the absolute decrease of allocations, this finding was small and statistically insignificant. However, direct and specific cue of observability such as eye contact induced generosity more significantly. With this being said, many types of input that has relation to anonymity and observability influence prosocial behavior; and individuals are different in terms of sensitivity to various types of such input. Considering the fact that individuals vary in terms of sensitivity to visual or physical cues, it is not possible to come up with a conclusive inference that would quality subtle cues as influential to the generosity of people in an economic game.
As an application, the research could be of good use in a sense that it would make you think more critically who and when to trust, but in the same way, it would make you ask yourself when to trust your instincts. However, this could also be used negatively in such a way that individuals would learn to manipulate others, especially when there are no physical contact. Of course, confounding factors would take effect on the result of the experiments. The person’s background and the common practices concerning visual cues, which are commonly adopted by the person will also affect their sensitivity to subtle cues. Suggestively, a meta analysis that focus on how physical cues are interpreted by people from different backgrounds including nationality, culture, and religion. It is firstly important to learn more about the factors that influence human sensitivities in order to understand how it is possible for people to manifest generosity when presented with physical or visual signals.

Work Cited Page

Eisenberg, N. & Mussen, P.H. The roots of prosocial behavior in children. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989. Print.
Haley, K. & Fessler, D. (2005). Nobody’s watching? Subtle cues affect generosity in an
Anonymous economic game. Evolution and Human Behavior, 26, 245-256.