Interpersonal misunderstanding is often rooted in noise, or discrepancies between intended and actual outcomes for an interaction partner due to unintended errors (e.g., not being able to respond to an email due to a local network breakdown). How can one effectively cope with noise in social dilemmas, situations in which self-interest and collective interests are conflicting? Consistent with hy...

Costly signaling theory (CST) offers an explanation of generosity and collective action that contrasts sharply with explanations based on conditional reciprocity. This makes it particularly relevant to situations involving widespread unconditional provisioning of collective goods. We provide a preliminary application of CST to ethnographic data on turtle hunting and public feasting among the Me...

Generosity is greatly valued and admired, but can it sometimes be unappealing? The current study investigated 8- to 10-year-old children's (N = 128) preference for generous individuals, and the effects of social comparison on their preferences. In Experiment 1, children showed a strong preference for a generous to a stingy child; however, this preference was significantly reduced in a situation...

In generosity games, one agreement payoff is exogenously given, whereas the other is endogenously determined by the proposer’s choice of the ”pie” size. This has been shown to induce pie choices which are either efficiency or equality seeking. In our experiment, before playing the generosity game, participants are asked to buy their role via a random price mechanism. This should entitle them to...

When people are the victims of greed or recipients of generosity, their first impulse is often to pay back that behavior in kind. What happens when people cannot reciprocate, but instead have the chance to be cruel or kind to someone entirely different--to pay it forward? In 5 experiments, participants received greedy, equal, or generous divisions of money or labor from an anonymous person and ...