Altruistic Advice Giving Shoham Choshen-Hillel and Ilan Yaniv The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Introduction General General Method References Schotter, A. (2003). Decision-making with naive advice. The American Economic Review, 93(2), 196–201. Yaniv, I. (2004). The benefit of additional opinions. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(2), 75–78.. % of participants who gave advice % Study 2: The Benefit for the Advice- Receiver Low (10 NIS) High (20 NIS) N=177 Part 1: The Doors Game: Discover a Winning Rule Part 2: The Decision: Get a Prize or Give Advice  The ‘Lottery Box,’ in which case the form will be entered into a monetary lottery (The self-interest option). Advice-giver’s gain Advice-receiver’s expected gain  The ‘Advice Box,’ in which case it will be passed on to an anonymous participant who will have only one round to play (The altruistic option). For further information (and advice) please contact: High (16 NIS) General Conclusions Low (8 NIS) The rate of advice-giving increased with: 1. The effectiveness of the advice, namely, the receiver’s potential gain. 2. The advisor’s own gain in the game. Study 1: The Cost of Giving Advice Low High High Cost 10 NIS – 50% High Cost 5 NIS – 100% Low Cost 5 NIS – 50% Low High Chose Advice Chose Prize 69% 42.5% 47% High Cost 10 NIS – 50% High Cost 5 NIS – 100% Low Cost 5 NIS – 50% % of participants who gave advice II: Participants who chose to give advice reported higher satisfaction with their decision than those who opted for the prize. Altruistic behavior is indeed common. Over 40% of the participants were willing to forgo a monetary prize in order to give advice. III: Among the participants who chose to give advice, the larger the prize they gave up, the higher their satisfaction ratings were. Results Satisfaction ratings with decision Advice-givers’ satisfaction with their decision I: Participants gave more advice when the forgone prize was lower. Advice-giving leads to efficient social outcomes: - Decision makers greatly benefit from receiving advice (Yaniv, 2004), whereas the costs to the advisors are often low. -Advice also enhances levels of cooperation in groups (Schotter, 2003). - We test the idea that people behave altruistically and give advice to others, even at a cost to themselves. - We hypothesize that this behavior follows efficiency calculations, i.e., people give more advice the lower the cost of giving it, and the higher the potential benefit to the receivers. -Further, we test people’s post-decisional satisfaction after making either altruistic or self-interested choices.  Participants play 60 rounds of a computerized game.  In each round they must choose one of six doors.  Behind each door there is either a prize or a goat.  For one of the six doors, the probability of winning the prize is significantly higher.  Through playing, participants discover the winning rule. Participants write down the winning rule (best door id #) on a form and then choose between putting it in one of two boxes: Overall, we have found a remarkable tendency to give altruistic advice. As expected, the rate of advice-giving increased with the efficiency of the advice. It seems that people are willing to behave altruistically to the extent that they can leverage their knowledge and provide helpful advice at a low cost. We refer to this phenomenon as “calculated altruism ”. Generally, it appears that people derive some internal (psychological) reward from making altruistic decisions that affect others’ benefits. N=117