Hierarchy can crowd out altruism. That’s the message of this new paper by Luigi Bosco.
He got groups of people to play series of dictator and ultimatum games, in which one person offers another a division of a pot of money.
In one set of groups, prize money from the games was split equally. In another set, the individual who accrued most money was allowed to decide how the prize money was to be distributed in other games.
Mr Bosco found that players in the second set made significantly less generous offers in the games. That suggests that competition for power - the ability to decide how others (not oneself) get paid - can make people more selfish and less altruistic.
There are at least three implications here:
1. In some contexts, traditional motives - money and power - might be counterproductive; we should read this paper alongside research (pdf) by Kathleen Vohs which has found that merely thinking about money can make people more selfish. In organizations where there is a big pay-off to co-operation - such as from sharing information, kicking around ideas or mentoring others - hierarchy and financial motivation might reduce efficiency.
2. Institutions shape “character” - they have the power to make us more or less selfish. This suggests that the costs and benefits of institutional design are large. Could it be that business managers and politicians over-rate the importance of policy, relative to that of institutional design?
3. When offered the competition for power, men became more selfish than women. This corroborates other research, showing that there are gender differences in how people play tournaments. The “glass ceiling” might exist, in part, therefore because contests for status in a hierarchy favours masculine qualities. This in turn suggests that feminists especially should be sceptical about the merits of hierarchy and competition for power.
He got groups of people to play series of dictator and ultimatum games, in which one person offers another a division of a pot of money.
In one set of groups, prize money from the games was split equally. In another set, the individual who accrued most money was allowed to decide how the prize money was to be distributed in other games.
Mr Bosco found that players in the second set made significantly less generous offers in the games. That suggests that competition for power - the ability to decide how others (not oneself) get paid - can make people more selfish and less altruistic.
There are at least three implications here:
1. In some contexts, traditional motives - money and power - might be counterproductive; we should read this paper alongside research (pdf) by Kathleen Vohs which has found that merely thinking about money can make people more selfish. In organizations where there is a big pay-off to co-operation - such as from sharing information, kicking around ideas or mentoring others - hierarchy and financial motivation might reduce efficiency.
2. Institutions shape “character” - they have the power to make us more or less selfish. This suggests that the costs and benefits of institutional design are large. Could it be that business managers and politicians over-rate the importance of policy, relative to that of institutional design?
3. When offered the competition for power, men became more selfish than women. This corroborates other research, showing that there are gender differences in how people play tournaments. The “glass ceiling” might exist, in part, therefore because contests for status in a hierarchy favours masculine qualities. This in turn suggests that feminists especially should be sceptical about the merits of hierarchy and competition for power.
If they were capable of being sceptical, would they be feminists?
Posted by: dearieme | November 28, 2008 at 03:22 PM
Altruism is something I have a great deal of problems with. I will not bore you with the details but twice in my life I have had to make decisions that could have resulted in my own death, and I chose in the split second you get to think about what you are doing, to risk my own life in order that someone else might survive.
Now all this sounds very courageous but it was not I was just acting as I believe any other human being would do. The calculation was very simple, and it was a calculation, (these split seconds that you act in an emergency are slowed down to near action replay mode) was if I don't help or save the other persons how would I live with myself.
The trade off if you like was like someone holding a gun to your loved ones head and asking you if you would like to take their place, you do it because you do not wish to live on the gunmans terms, or in my case I did not want to live on lucks terms, IMO altruism if its anything is super egoism, I personally believe that both altruism and egoism are in fact the same thing. And you are born that way, we all are
Which if true, makes the premise of your post pseudo scinece.
Posted by: McVlad | November 28, 2008 at 03:34 PM
Isn't there an essential further experiment? How do the "losers" behave when similar games are performed again, so that a "loser" becomes a "winner"?
Posted by: Charlieman | November 28, 2008 at 10:06 PM
"The “glass ceiling” might exist, in part, therefore because contests for status in a hierarchy favours masculine qualities."
It might be more accurate to say that "masculine qualities" make a person more interested in successfully competing for status in a hierarchy.
It is the difference between being a better runner, and trying harder to outrun something.
Posted by: ad | November 30, 2008 at 10:20 PM