Blain, Bastien;
Marks, Joseph;
Czech, Philipp;
Sharot, Tali;
(2022)
Observing others give & take: A computational account of bystanders' feelings and actions.
PLOS Computational Biology
, 18
(5)
, Article e1010010. 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010010.
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Abstract
Social interactions influence people’s feelings and behavior. Here, we propose that a person’s well-being is influenced not only by interactions they experience themselves, but also by those they observe. In particular, we test and quantify the influence of observed selfishness and observed inequality on a bystanders’ feelings and non-costly punishment decisions. We developed computational models that relate others’ (un)selfish acts to observers’ emotional reactions and punishment decisions. These characterize the rules by which others’ interactions are transformed into bystanders’ reactions, and successfully predict those reactions in out-of-sample participants. The models highlight the impact of two social values—‘selfishness aversion’ and ‘inequality aversion’. As for the latter we find that even small violations from perfect equality have a disproportionately large impact on feelings and punishment. In this age of internet and social media we constantly observe others’ online interactions, in addition to in-person interactions. Quantifying the consequences of such observations is important for predicting their impact on society.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Observing others give & take: A computational account of bystanders' feelings and actions |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010010 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010010 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2022 Blain et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | Simulation and modeling, Game theory, Prosocial behavior, Animal sociality, Questionnaires, Behavioral and social aspects of health, Emotions, Social discrimination |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10148204 |
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