Prosocial Behavior Increases with Age across Five Economic Games

Abstract

Ontogenic studies of human prosociality generally agree on that human prosociality increases from early childhood through early adulthood; however, it has not been established if prosociality increases beyond early adulthood. We examined a sample of 408 non-student residents from Tokyo, Japan, who were evenly distributed across age (20–59) and sex. Participants played five economic games each separated by a few months. We demonstrated that prosocial behavior increased with age beyond early adulthood and this effect was shown across all five economic games. A similar, but weaker, age-related trend was found in one of three social value orientation measures of prosocial preferences. We measured participants’ belief that manipulating others is a wise strategy for social success, and found that this belief declined with age. Participants’ satisfaction with the unilateral exploitation outcome of the prisoner’s dilemma games also declined with age. These two factors—satisfaction with the DC outcome in the prisoner’s dilemma games and belief in manipulation—mediated the age effect on both attitudinal and behavioral prosociality. Participants’ age-related socio-demographic traits such as marriage, having children, and owning a house weakly mediated the age effect on prosociality through their relationships with satisfaction with the DC outcome and belief in manipulation.

Old dog, new tricks: Age differences in dog personality traits, associations with human personality traits, and links to important outcomes

“…For example, like wild blue tits, senescence is associated with lifespan declines in characteristics associated with enhanced fitness, like aggression (Class & Brommer, 2016). Similar late-life personality changes (towards greater prosociality) are often found in humans, although the mechanisms leading to increases in prosociality are likely different between dogs and humans (Matsumoto, Yamagishi, Li, & Kiyonari, 2016).…”

Prosocial Behavior and Depression: a Case for Developmental Gender Differences

“…In contrast, framing prosocial behavior to be consistent with self-interests by introducing a delay in decision making that promotes reflection [48, 49] or by explicitly stating how prosocial behavior benefits the individual [50] can make men, but not women, behave less prosocially [46•]. Importantly, gender differences are absent in adulthood if social interactions are conducted with a stranger or a computer program [51•, 52], suggesting that prosocial behavior is generally the same for men and women under baseline conditions, but begins to differ when context and motivation for social behavior is manipulated.…”

A cross‐national analysis of sex differences in prisoner's dilemma games

“…First, we aim to investigate whether we observe a sex difference in cooperation using a more representative sample of participants in terms of age, sex, and occupation and involving a larger set of countries. This is an open question, since the cooperation relevant factors introduced above – risk aversion (Halek & Eisenhauer, ; Mata, Josef, & Hertwig, ), trust (Sutter & Kocher, ), and prosocial behaviour (Matsumoto, Yamagishi, Li, & Kiyonari, ) – are influenced by age and other demographic factors. Hence, studies with more diverse participant samples would allow for conclusions with higher external validity.…”

“…This is an open question, since the cooperation relevant factors introduced aboverisk aversion (Halek & Eisenhauer, 2001;Mata, Josef, & Hertwig, 2016), trust (Sutter & Kocher, 2007), and prosocial behaviour (Matsumoto, Yamagishi, Li, & Kiyonari, 2016) are influenced by age and other demographic factors. Hence, studies with more diverse participant samples would allow for conclusions with higher external validity.…”