Altruism and social integration

Pablo Brañas-Garza, Ramon Cobo-Reyes, Maria Paz Espinosa, Natalia Jiménez (), Jaromír Kovářík and Giovanni Ponti ()

Games and Economic Behavior, 2010, vol. 69, issue 2, 249-257

Abstract: We report on a two-stage experiment in which (i) we first elicit the social network within a section of undergraduate students and (ii) we then measure their altruistic attitudes by means 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 framing and social distance, which have been shown to significantly affect giving in previous studies. Our findings suggest that social distance and social integration are complementary determinants of altruistic behavior.

Keywords: Altruism; Centrality; Social; network; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (66)

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Related works:
Working Paper: An experimental device to elicit social networks (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:69:y:2010:i:2:p:249-257

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