Moral Markets Zak, Paul J; Jensen, Michael C
12/2010
eBook
Like nature itself, modern economic life is driven by relentless competition and unbridled selfishness. Or is it? Drawing on converging evidence from neuroscience, social science, biology, law, and ...philosophy,Moral Marketsmakes the case that modern market exchange works only because most people, most of the time, act virtuously. Competition and greed are certainly part of economics, butMoral Marketsshows how the rules of market exchange have evolved to promote moral behavior and how exchange itself may make us more virtuous. Examining the biological basis of economic morality, tracing the connections between morality and markets, and exploring the profound implications of both,Moral Marketsprovides a surprising and fundamentally new view of economics--one that also reconnects the field to Adam Smith's position that morality has a biological basis.Moral Markets, the result of an extensive collaboration between leading social and natural scientists, includes contributions by neuroeconomist Paul Zak; economists Robert H. Frank, Herbert Gintis, Vernon Smith (winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics), and Bart Wilson; law professors Oliver Goodenough, Erin O'Hara, and Lynn Stout; philosophers William Casebeer and Robert Solomon; primatologists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal; biologists Carl Bergstrom, Ben Kerr, and Peter Richerson; anthropologists Robert Boyd and Michael Lachmann; political scientists Elinor Ostrom and David Schwab; management professor Rakesh Khurana; computational science and informatics doctoral candidate Erik Kimbrough; and business writer Charles Handy.
Human beings routinely help strangers at costs to themselves. Sometimes the help offered is generous-offering more than the other expects. The proximate mechanisms supporting generosity are not ...well-understood, but several lines of research suggest a role for empathy. In this study, participants were infused with 40 IU oxytocin (OT) or placebo and engaged in a blinded, one-shot decision on how to split a sum of money with a stranger that could be rejected. Those on OT were 80% more generous than those given a placebo. OT had no effect on a unilateral monetary transfer task dissociating generosity from altruism. OT and altruism together predicted almost half the interpersonal variation in generosity. Notably, OT had twofold larger impact on generosity compared to altruism. This indicates that generosity is associated with both altruism as well as an emotional identification with another person.
We measured neurophysiologic responses and task performance while participants solved mazes after choosing whether to adopt an imperfect helper algorithm.
Every day we must decide whether to trust or ...distrust algorithms. Will an algorithm improve our performance on a task? What if we trust it too much?
Participants had to pay to use the algorithm and were aware that it offered imperfect help. We varied the information about the algorithm to assess the factors that affected adoption while measuring participants’ peripheral neurophysiology.
We found that information about previous adoption by others had a larger effect on adoption and resulted in lower cognitive load than did information about algorithm accuracy. The neurophysiologic measurement showed that algorithm adoption without any information resulted in low cognitive engagement during the task and impaired task performance. Conversely, algorithm use after information about others’ use improved engagement and performance.
By objectively measuring cognitive load and task performance, we identified how to increase algorithm adoption while sustaining high performance by human operators.
Algorithm adoption can be increased by sharing previous use information and performance improved by providing a reason to monitor the algorithm.
We collected neurophysiologic data while varying information about an algorithm that assisted participants in solving a timed and incentivized maze and found that information about prior use by others more effectively influenced adoption, reduced cognitive load, and improved performance compared to algorithm accuracy information.
•People may be hesitant to trust algorithms.•Accuracy information has less influence on algorithm adoption than prior use by others.•Information about algorithm use by others reduced cognitive load.•Imperfect algorithms need to be monitored to reach high performance.
The way the integration of neuroscience and design thinking can help companies create extraordinary customer experiences is discussed. The author explains that powerful emotional responses play a ...crucial role in making experiences memorable and valuable. These emotional responses, which are unconscious and cannot be accurately reported through surveys or ratings, can be measured through neurologic activity. The author introduces the concept of immersion, which involves the binding of dopamine to receptors in the brain's prefrontal cortex and the release of oxytocin, and explains how it influences spending decisions and customer loyalty. The article then explores how neuroscience can be applied to the three key steps of the design-thinking process: empathize, define, and prototype and test. By understanding customers' emotional responses and addressing sources of frustration, companies can create extraordinary experiences that drive customer loyalty and profitability.
How do human beings decide when to be selfish or selfless? In this study, we gave testosterone to 25 men to establish its impact on prosocial behaviors in a double-blind within-subjects design. We ...also confirmed participants' testosterone levels before and after treatment through blood draws. Using the Ultimatum Game from behavioral economics, we find that men with artificially raised T, compared to themselves on placebo, were 27% less generous towards strangers with money they controlled (95% CI placebo: (1.70, 2.72); 95% CI T: (.98, 2.30)). This effect scales with a man's level of total-, free-, and dihydro-testosterone (DHT). Men in the lowest decile of DHT were 560% more generous than men in the highest decile of DHT. We also found that men with elevated testosterone were more likely to use their own money punish those who were ungenerous toward them. Our results continue to hold after controlling for altruism. We conclude that elevated testosterone causes men to behave antisocially.
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Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Empathy is related to a variety of prosocial behaviors, but the brain mechanisms producing the experience of empathy have not been fully characterized. This study investigated whether the experience ...of empathy raises oxytocin levels and affects subsequent generosity toward strangers. Short video clips of an emotional scene and an unemotional scene were used as stimuli. Participants rated the emotions they experienced and then played a $40 ultimatum game to gauge their generosity. We found that empathy was associated with a 47% increase in oxytocin from baseline. We also found the empathy–oxytocin response was stronger in women than in men. Higher levels of empathy were also associated with more generous monetary offers toward strangers in the ultimatum game. Our findings provide the first evidence that oxytocin is a physiologic signature for empathy and that empathy mediates generosity.
Human behavior lies somewhere between purely self-interested homo economicus and socially-motivated homo reciprocans. The factors that cause people to choose self-interest over costly cooperation can ...provide insights into human nature and are essential when designing institutions and policies that are meant to influence behavior. Alcohol consumption can shed light on the inflection point between selfish and selfless because it is commonly consumed and has global effects on the brain. The present study administered alcohol or placebo (N = 128), titrated to sex and weight, to examine its effect on cooperation in a standard task in experimental economics, the public goods game (PGG). Alcohol, compared to placebo, doubled the number of free-riders who contributed nothing to the public good and reduced average PGG contributions by 32% (p = .005). This generated 64% higher average profits in the PGG for those who consumed alcohol. The degree of intoxication, measured by blood alcohol concentration, linearly reduced PGG contributions (r = -0.18, p = .05). The reduction in cooperation was traced to a deterioration in mood and an increase in physiologic stress as measured by adrenocorticotropic hormone. Our findings indicate that moderate alcohol consumption inhibits the motivation to cooperate and that homo economicus is stressed and unhappy.
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Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Humans express loyalty to consumer brands much like they do in human relationships. The neuroactive chemical oxytocin is an important biological substrate of human attachment and this study tested ...whether consumer-brand relationships can be influenced by oxytocin administration. We present a mathematical model of brand attachment that generates empirically-testable hypotheses. The model is tested by administering synthetic oxytocin or placebo to male and female participants (N = 77) who received information about brands and had an opportunity to purchase branded products. We focused on two brand personality dimensions: warmth and competence. Oxytocin increased perceptions of brand competence but not brand warmth relative to placebo. We also found that participants were willing to pay more for branded products through its effect on brand competence. When writing about one's favorite brands, oxytocin enhanced the use of positive emotional language as well as words related to family and friends. These findings provide preliminary evidence that consumers build relationships with brands using the biological mechanisms that evolved to form human attachments.
Oxytocin increases trust in humans Heinrichs, Markus; Fehr, Ernst; Kosfeld, Michael ...
Nature,
06/2005, Letnik:
435, Številka:
7042
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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Trust pervades human societies. Trust is indispensable in friendship, love, families and organizations, and plays a key role in economic exchange and politics. In the absence of trust among trading ...partners, market transactions break down. In the absence of trust in a country's institutions and leaders, political legitimacy breaks down. Much recent evidence indicates that trust contributes to economic, political and social success. Little is known, however, about the biological basis of trust among humans. Here we show that intranasal administration of oxytocin, a neuropeptide that plays a key role in social attachment and affiliation in non-human mammals, causes a substantial increase in trust among humans, thereby greatly increasing the benefits from social interactions. We also show that the effect of oxytocin on trust is not due to a general increase in the readiness to bear risks. On the contrary, oxytocin specifically affects an individual's willingness to accept social risks arising through interpersonal interactions. These results concur with animal research suggesting an essential role for oxytocin as a biological basis of prosocial approach behaviour.
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Dostopno za:
DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Climate change is an issue which elicits low engagement, even among concerned segments of the public. While research suggests that the presentation of factual information (e.g., scientific consensus) ...can be persuasive to some audiences, there is also empirical evidence indicating that it may also increase resistance in others. In this research, we investigate whether climate change narratives structured as stories are better than informational narratives at promoting pro-environmental behavior in diverse audiences. We propose that narratives structured as stories facilitate experiential processing, heightening affective engagement and emotional arousal, which serve as an impetus for action-taking. Across three studies, we manipulate the structure of climate change communications to investigate how this influences narrative transportation, measures of autonomic reactivity indicative of emotional arousal, and pro-environmental behavior. We find that stories are more effective than informational narratives at promoting pro-environmental behavior (studies 1 and 3) and self-reported narrative transportation (study 2), particularly those with negatively valenced endings (study 3). The results of study 3 indicate that embedding information in story structure influences cardiac activity, and subsequently, pro-environmental behavior. These findings connect works from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, narratology, and climate change communication, advancing our understanding of how narrative structure influences engagement with climate change through emotional arousal, which likely incites pro-environmental behavior as the brain’s way of optimizing bodily budgets.
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