It Depends Who Is Watching You: 3-D Agent Cues Increase Fairness

Jan Krátký; John J McGraw; Dimitris Xygalatas; Panagiotis Mitkidis; Paul Reddish

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0148845

It Depends Who Is Watching You: 3-D Agent Cues Increase Fairness

PLoS One. 2016 Feb 9;11(2):e0148845. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0148845. eCollection 2016.

Authors

Jan Krátký¹, John J McGraw^{2

3}, Dimitris Xygalatas^{1

2

4}, Panagiotis Mitkidis^{2

5

6}, Paul Reddish¹

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.
² Interacting Minds Centre, Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
³ Departments of Religious Studies and Central American Studies, California State University Northridge, Northridge, California, United States of America.
⁴ Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, United States of America.
⁵ Center for Advanced Hindsight, Social Science Research Institute, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America.
⁶ Interdisciplinary Center for Organizational Architecture, Department of Management, School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.

Abstract

Laboratory and field studies have demonstrated that exposure to cues of intentional agents in the form of eyes can increase prosocial behavior. However, previous research mostly used 2-dimensional depictions as experimental stimuli. Thus far no study has examined the influence of the spatial properties of agency cues on this prosocial effect. To investigate the role of dimensionality of agency cues on fairness, 345 participants engaged in a decision-making task in a naturalistic setting. The experimental treatment included a 3-dimensional pseudo-realistic model of a human head and a 2-dimensional picture of the same object. The control stimuli consisted of a real plant and its 2-D image. Our results partly support the findings of previous studies that cues of intentional agents increase prosocial behavior. However, this effect was only found for the 3-D cues, suggesting that dimensionality is a critical variable in triggering these effects in a real-world settings. Our research sheds light on a hitherto unexplored aspect of the effects of environmental cues and their morphological properties on decision-making.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Cues
Decision Making
Female
Humans
Male
Photic Stimulation
Social Behavior
Social Justice / psychology*

Grants and funding

The authors acknowledge support from the Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion at Masaryk University (LEVYNA, CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0048), co-financed by the European Social Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic, and the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University; the Velux Foundation core research group Technologies of the Mind; and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) project “The Evolution of Religion and Morality”. The authors also thank Redbull corp. for supporting the study by supplying the Redbull drinks and refrigerator. The authors have no affiliation with Redbull and the only involvement was through the sponsorship of drinks. The Redbull corp. had no involvement in gathering of data, analysis or publication. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.