Intuitive Prosociality: Heterogeneous Treatment Effects or False Positive?

Abstract

Heterogenous treatment effects make it difficult to extrapolate from one research setting to another. However, what appears to be differences in effects across subpopulations may simply be false positives. This paper uses a representative sample of the Norwegian population (N = 1390) to systematically test for several proposed sources of heterogeneity in the literature on intuitive prosociality – a literature with large variation in results, which some researchers claim results from heterogeneity in the underlying effect. We use time pressure to induce intuitive decision making, and exogenously vary participants’ experience with the game. We find no overall effect of time constraints on dictator game for inexperienced subjects, and there is no evidence for an interaction effect between subject experience and the effect of time pressure. As a more general test of treatment effect heterogeneity, we consider the full distribution of treatment effects conditional on various proposed moderators in the literature. The distribution of conditional effects is consistent with no causal effect of time pressure on giving and no systematic heterogeneity in the underlying effect across subpopulations.

The intuitive cooperation hypothesis revisited: a meta-analytic examination of effect size and between-study heterogeneity

“…Nevertheless, tests for heterogeneity between studies will not necessarily pick up genuine individual-level heterogeneity, if such individual characteristics tend to be similar across study populations, and some studies argue that such individual-level heterogeneity is important for the link between intuition and cooperation (e.g., Alós-Ferrer and Garagnani 2018). One recent study on time-pressure effects in the dictator game tests more directly for such individual-level heterogeneity (across a large set of potentially relevant variables) and finds little evidence for it (Strømland and Torsvik 2019).…”

The dual-process approach to human sociality: Meta-analytic evidence for a theory of internalized heuristics for self-preservation

“…Main result Time constraint studies Carlson et al (2016) DG charity No effect of Pressure compared to Delay Jarke & Lohse (2016) DG No effect of Pressure compared to Delay Tinghög et al (2016) DG charity No effect of Pressure compared to Delay Artavia-Mora et al 2017Field experiment Pressure increases helping Kessler et al (2017) DG Pressure has no effect compared to Baseline Mrkva (2017) DG charity Delay increases giving, compared to Baseline Artavia-Mora et al 2018Field experiment Pressure increases helping Andersen et al (2018) DG No effect of Delay compared to Baseline Chuan et al 2018DG charity Delay decreases giving Gärtner 2018DG Pressure decreases giving, only when the dictator game is presented with no statusquo Strømland & Torsvik (2019) DG Pressure has no effect on giving Grolleau et al (2018) DG Delay decreases giving Cognitive load studies Roch et al (2000) Taking from common pool Load increases taking Cornelissen et al (2011) DG Load increases giving among pro-socials; no effect among individualists Benjamin et al (2013) DG Load has no effect on giving Schulz et al 2014DG Load increases giving Kessler & Meier (2014) DG charity Load has no effect on giving Hauge et al (2016) DG Load has no effect on giving Tinghög et al (2016) DG charity Load has no effect on giving Grossman & Van der Weele (2017) DG charity Load has no effect on giving Cognitive prime studies Small et al (2007) DG charity Intuition increases giving, but only when the target is identifiable and not when is statistical…”