A research team led by Toshio Yamagishi, a research fellow at the Institute of Brain Science, Tamagawa University, revealed that even rational individuals tend to behave altruistically when it is found through economic game experiments that there are altruistic behaviors that can be done at low cost. I made it.The results of the research were published in the British scientific journal "Scientific Reports" (online version) on June 2016, 6 (Japan time).
Altruistic behaviors that humans perform in their daily lives, that is, behaviors that bring profits to others without losing their own disadvantages, can be done with a small amount of effort and burden, and can be accompanied by a large burden. It is thought to affect whether or not to act.
However, in economic game experiments that measure altruistic behavior so far, if you ask participants to use the money of the original money given as an experiment participation fee for altruistic behavior, even if the amount is several thousand yen, it will be for one month. It has been shown that there is no big difference in the percentage of people who act altruistically even with their salary.This is because we adopted a method called "factor placement among participants" that divides each participant into conditions where the burden of taking altruistic behavior is small and conditions that are large, and it is not possible to change one's behavior according to the size of the burden. Was set to.
On the other hand, in this study, we conducted an experiment using "factor placement within participants" that experienced both cases where each participant behaved altruistically with a small financial burden and cases where a large financial burden was required. went.
As a result, it is shown that even those who do not take altruistic behavior when they are asked to bear only a specific amount of money will take more altruistic behavior that can be done with a small burden if there are other altruistic behaviors with a large burden. Was done.It was clarified that if given the opportunity to take both "expensive" and "cheap" altruistic behaviors, even those who normally do not take altruistic behaviors will be able to take cheap altruistic behaviors. ..
