2024/12/23 by Davide Barrera, Sara Romanò, Giulia Bocca · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Neuroscience · #Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
paper · doi:10.1177/10434631241307528
openalex publication_date 2024/12/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This study presents two experiments investigating how frames and incentives – both monetary and non-monetary – affect prosocial behavior. In Experiment 1, the decision consisted of a one-shot dictator game and two factors were manipulated in a 2x3 factorial design: normative frame (present/absent) and incentives (none/monetary/nonmonetary). In Experiment 2, we manipulated the same two factors in a more realistic scenario, consisting of a real effort task, and measured prosocial behavior in terms of donations of both time invested in the task and material resources. Results suggest that the effects of frames and incentives depend on the context. The exposure to a normative frame increases prosocial behavior in Experiment 1, while in Experiment 2 the presence of a normative frame increases donations of time but not of material resources. By contrast, in both experiments, participants’ material donations were higher when non-monetary incentives were given, but we found no differences in donations of time between types of incentives in experiment 2.