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Prosocial values and group assortation

Within an N-person prisoner’s dilemma game

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Abstract

Ninety-five freshmen each recruited three peers to play a "group bidding game," an N-person prisoner’s dilemma in which anyone could win movie tickets depending on their scores in the game. Prior to playing, all participants completed a measure of prosocial value orientation. Replicating and extending earlier findings (Sheldon and McGregor 2000), our results show that prosocial participants were at a disadvantage within groups. Despite this vulnerability, prosocial participants did no worse overall than asocial participants because a counteracting group-level advantage arose for prosocials, who tended to be concentrated in groups. Implications of this assortative process for the egoism/altruism debate, and for hierarchical selection theory, are discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia, 65211, Columbia, MO

    Kennon M. Sheldon, Melanie Skaggs Sheldon & Richard Osbaldiston

Authors
  1. Kennon M. Sheldon
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  2. Melanie Skaggs Sheldon
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  3. Richard Osbaldiston
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kennon M. Sheldon.

Additional information

Ken Sheldon is an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California-Davis in 1992. His research interests include motivation, goals and values, well-being and personality development, social dilemmas, and the intersection of these issues.

Melanie Sheldon is a graduate student in social psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her research interests include hormonal influences on gender, evolutionary psychology, sex differences, and risk behavior.

Richard Osbaldiston is a graduate student in social psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. His research interests include environmental psychology, motivation theory, and social dilemmas.

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Sheldon, K.M., Sheldon, M.S. & Osbaldiston, R. Prosocial values and group assortation. Hum Nat 11, 387–404 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-000-1009-z

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