Our social psychologist friends love to play games
to see how we behave. One of the games of choice used to study social
cooperation is known as the Dictator Game. The game shows how benevolent your
dictatorship is going to be. The player is offered an asset and asked if they
would care to share it and how much of it they would care to share. Of course,
the social psychologist is looking at average group responses and not just you
or me, so they can draw broad expansive conclusions that help with our
stereotyping.
Nettle et al
from England’s old Geordie city of Newcastle upon Tyne have turned their social
psych’s magnifier on their hometown (1). They chose two areas of the city, one
comfortably off and the other somewhat deprived and offered to send them a £10
note through the mail if they filled in a survey.
This is where they turned to game play and asked if
they would like to give some or all of it away. It could be to an anonymous
person, a friend or a charity, but the recipient had to live at another
address. Note that each “Dictator” had only one type of “Recipient” to
consider. They had no choice. As sweeteners, those who had a charity choice were
offered a matching donation from the organizers. For those that could be generous
to friends, if they donated the whole amount, their friend would receive £20.
The results? Well, to me the big surprise was that there
were 40 people who had the “help your friend” offer out of the 118 who played
the game and they didn’t do a deal with their friend to share £20 in a 50/50
split.
In fact, in the comfortable neighborhood, the
average donation to a friend was the lowest of the three donations at about £4
compared to almost £5 to a stranger and nearly£8 to a charity.
In the deprived area, giving cash to a stranger
didn’t seem a good idea – maybe a cup of tea, but probably not. About 50p to a
friend was average and about £3 to charity was about it.
What conclusions can we draw? If you’re on hard
times, you don’t throw your money about, but you can still have your arm
twisted for charitable purposes. If you’re sitting comfortably in Geordieland,
you’d give more to a stranger than a friend. Maybe your “friends” are your
competitors? But, the big question, the elephant in the room, is why didn’t the
Geordies get together with their friends and share a £20 dinner?
