On the social nature of eyes: The effect of social cues in interaction and individual choice tasks

Watching Eyes and Living up to Expectations: Unkind, Not Kind, Eyes Increase First Mover Cooperation in a Sequential Prisoner’s Dilemma

“…This result contrasts with previous findings that showed that eye cues can increase generosity-presumably because eyes stimulate individuals to portray themselves in a good light to enhance their reputation [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. However, the absence of an eye effect in second mover decisions reported here is in full accordance with the results obtained by Fehr and Schneider [17], and is in line with the recent null-effects obtained in Northover et al's (2016) meta-analyses (inasmuch as reciprocity is a form of generosity) [21], hence supporting the idea that mere reputation concerns might be less affected by eye cues in comparison to expectations.…”

“…This minimizes the scope of watching eyes; however, eye cues could still exert a positive effect on the second mover's decision to reciprocate if they are interpreted as an opportunity to signal one's goodwill. A much-defended viewpoint is that, to capitalize on the consequences of being watched, individuals may respond to such cues by not being greedy, knowing that a prosocial reputation is rewarded in the long run [1,31]. Hence, according to the signaling hypothesis, eye cues would increase the second mover's cooperative decisions, regardless of their valence, as both kind and unkind eyes can serve as reminders that others are watching.…”

“…In laboratory studies, the display of eye-like cues (ranging from highly abstract to highly realistic depictions of eyes) increased generosity, both to strangers in the dictator game, and to a charity [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. Field studies validate these findings in real-life environments 1 , reporting that eyes can boost the level of prosociality or prevent a breach of commonly accepted rules of conduct: the presence of eyes increased charitable donations in a supermarket [8], boosted monetary contributions to a donation box in a Japanese-style tavern [9] and to an 'honesty box' for coffee [10], encouraged the clearing of one's own litter in the university cafeteria [11], increased the amount of time spent cleaning up garbage left at a bus stop [12], and furthermore discouraged cycle theft [13] and littering on campus [14]. 1 Field experiments are important to validate that the observed effect in the laboratory is not due to an experimenter demand effect or other constraints associated with laboratory experiments.…”

No evidence that a range of artificial monitoring cues influence online donations to charity in an MTurk sample

“…While an image alone cannot monitor behaviour, the evolutionary legacy hypothesis holds that humans possess an evolved proximate mechanism that causes us to react to monitoring cues as if our reputations are at stake [9]. Work using a range of economic games has shown that people act more prosocially when an image of eyes [7–13], or even simply three dots in the configuration of a face [14], is present in the environment. These effects have been replicated in real-world settings.…”

“…Eyes that appear angry may have a greater prosocial effect [15]. Pictures of faces, rather than eyes, have not been shown to increase prosociality in a dictator game [7], yet a schematic of a face made of three monochrome dots does increase prosociality [14]. Finally, field studies have shown that the effect of eyes on prosociality is stronger when fewer people are in the environment [15,17,21,22].…”