Inverted sharing gamer: experimental verification of a new operational definition of altruistic

• Grant number: 15/03751-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: June 01, 2015
• End date: February 28, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Antonio Celso de Noronha Goyos
• Grantee: Gabriela de Oliveira Zin
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Economic games have been useful as experimental models of complex social situations. Psychologists, economists and educators interested in the phenomenon of generosity and altruism have used economic games to study decision-making and resource allocation. One such game is called Sharing Game and research has examined the effects of some variables on the allocation of resources of the people. These games are important because they allow: to analyze the variables involved in decision making of individuals and characterize the choices to determine whether they are stable or influenced by these variables. However, under the setting altruism behavioral perspective is still inaccurate, which makes the hard area required by the experimental control, both with regard to the control by stimuli, and in regard to the parameters of response (strength, length, rate) and reinforcement (delay, magnitude, rate). The proposed study aims initially to review the conceptual literature on the subject altruism, looking for historically elucidate the construction of this concept in Behavior Analysis and then propose an inverted model of Sharing Game based on a conceptual refinement on the operationalization of altruism. In a delineation between subjects, experiments involving repeated attempts will be made over twenty opportunities in which undergraduates will make choices to distribute resources among themselves and an invisible and passive participant. Two hundred university participants will be divided equally into four conditions, one of which the exposure Sharing Game, another to set the Inverted Sharing Game, and the other two will be a merging of the two models presented in different orders. The objective of this experiment is to demonstrate the effect of the reversal of the Sharing Game on the self-controlled performance of the participants. The study is of social and scientific importance to present two experimental models to study the phenomenon of generosity or altruism, of particular interest within the scope of cooperation, its social importance and survival of the species. (AU)