Generalized Reciprocity: Can Generosity Become Contagious?

广义互惠：慷慨可以传染吗？

• 批准号: 1260348
• 负责人: Michael Macy
• 金额: $ 11.54万
• 依托单位: Cornell University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-03-15 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1260348&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Generalized; Reciprocity; Generosity; Become; Contagious

Every day, millions of people donate blood, stop to help a stranded motorist, participate in unpaid surveys, review restaurants, leave online product ratings, answer questions on Ask.com, contribute code to open-source software, and edit Wikipedia articles, often anonymously, without social recognition or opportunity to benefit from direct reciprocation. This widespread willingness to help a stranger poses a fascinating theoretical puzzle with enormous practical implications. An important key to the puzzle may be the possibility that helping behavior can be contagious--people respond to being helped by "paying it forward" to a third person. Known as "generalized reciprocity," this behavior has the potential to trigger a chain of helping that reaches far beyond the original act. Generalized reciprocity bridges two largely disconnected existing literatures on social contagion and altruistic behavior. Integrating these two research traditions, this project identifies and tests four specific conditions expected to alter the probability that a recipient of help will pay it forward: group size, observation of generalized reciprocity by others, the number of others from whom help has been received, and the number of others who will benefit. Data will be collected from a large field experiment in an online labor market and validated with a small-group experiment run in a traditional laboratory setting. The results will advance theoretical knowledge about helping behavior and its diffusion, as well as new methodologies for online research, both within sociology and across multiple fields, including social psychology, behavioral economics, moral philosophy, computer science, communication, and information science.Broader ImpactThe potential ripple effect of generalized reciprocity means that when we help others, we may also be indirectly helping many -- both online and offline -- to mobilize voluntary contributions by more effectively targeting those who have benefited in the past. In addition, the project will have practical benefits for the scientific community by developing and demonstrating an innovative method for large online field experiments that can be adapted for a wide range of other studies of decision-making and diffusion.

每天，数百万人献血，停下来帮助滞留的驾车者，参加无偿调查，审查餐厅，留下在线产品评级，在ask.com上回答问题，向开源软件贡献代码，以及编辑Wikipedia文章，通常是匿名的，通常没有社会认可或没有直接互换的社会认可或机会。这种愿意帮助陌生人带来了一个引人入胜的理论难题，具有巨大的实际含义。难题的一个重要关键可能是，帮助行为可能具有感染力 - 人们通过将其向第三人称“向前付款”来响应。这种行为被称为“广义互惠”，有可能触发一系列帮助链，远远超出了原始行为。广义互惠桥梁桥接了两个关于社会传染和利他行为的现有文献。该项目整合了这两种研究传统，确定并测试了预期的四个特定条件，以改变接收者将向其付款的可能性：团体规模，其他人对广义互惠的观察，其他人的帮助以及其他受益的其他人的数量。数据将从在线劳动力市场的大型现场实验中收集，并通过在传统实验室环境中进行的小组实验进行了验证。结果将促进有关帮助行为及其传播的理论知识，以及在社会学和跨多个领域的在线研究的新方法，包括社会心理学，行为经济学，道德哲学，计算机科学，计算机科学，交流和信息科学。实现我们的潜在浪漫效应，在线互惠的潜在波动 - 我们可能会帮助其他人，我们可能会帮助其他人，我们可能会在线效应，并在线效应，也可以独立地置于独立的效果，这也可以独立地行动，这两个方面都可以帮助您进行。针对过去受益的人。此外，该项目将通过开发和演示用于大型在线现场实验的创新方法来为科学界带来实际好处，这些方法可以适应其他关于决策和扩散的其他研究。