Altruism and social integration

Branas-Garza, Pablo, Cobo-Reyes, Ramón, Espinosa, María Paz, Jiménez, Natalia, Kovářík, Jaromír and Ponti, Giovanni (2010) Altruism and social integration. Games and Economic Behavior, 69 (10). pp. 249-257. ISSN 0899-8256 (doi:10.1016/j.geb.2009.10.014)

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Abstract

We develop a two-stage experimental protocol by which i) we elicit the social network within a group of undergraduate students and ii) we measure their altruistic attitudes by way of a standard Dictator game. We observe that more socially integrated subjects are also more altruistic, as betweenness centrality and reciprocal degree are positively correlated with the level of giving, even after controlling for the effect of social distance, which has been shown to affect giving. Our findings suggest that social distance and network position are complementary determinants of altruistic behavior.

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