Evolution of Helping and Harming in Viscous Populations When Group Size Varies

Funding: Balliol College and the Royal Society.Recent years have seen huge interest in understanding how demographic factors mediate the evolution of social behavior in viscous populations. Here we study the impact of variation in group size on the evolution of helping and harming behavior. Although variation in group size influences the degree of relatedness and the degree of competition between groupmates, we find that these effects often exactly cancel, so as to give no net impact of variation in group size on the evolution of helping and harming. Specifically, (1) obligate helping and harming are never mediated by variation in group size, (2) facultative helping and harming are not mediated by variation in group size when this variation is spatial only, (3) facultative helping and harming are mediated by variation in group size only when this variation is temporal or both spatial and temporal, and (4) when there is an effect of variation in group size, facultative helping is favored in big groups and facultative harming is favored in little groups. Moreover, we find that spatial and temporal heterogeneity in individual fecundity may interact with patch-size heterogeneity to change these predictions, promoting the evolution of harming in big patches and of helping in little patches.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Promoting Helping Behavior with Framing in Dictator games.

A number of recent papers on double-blind dictator games have obtained significant generous behavior when information regarding the recipient or any other social context is provided. In contrast, the lack of information discourages other-regarding behavior and the subject’s behavior closely approximates the game-theoretic prediction based on the selfishness assumption. This paper uses framing to explore the role of helping—behavior in dictator games. The whole experiment includes both classroom and regular experiments for the baseline and the framing treatment. To promote these motivations we included a “non—neutral” sentence at the end of the instructions, which reads “Note that he relies on you”. Our baseline and framed DG are statistically different from each other, indicating that the additional sentence promotes generous-regarding behavior.dictator game, framing effects, helping behavior, altruism.

Dynamics of Helping Behavior and Networks in a Small World

To investigate an effect of social interaction on the bystanders' intervention in emergency situations a rescue model was introduced which includes the effects of the victim's acquaintance with bystanders and those among bystanders from a network perspective. This model reproduces the experimental result that the helping rate (success rate in our model) tends to decrease although the number of bystanders $k$ increases. And the interaction among homogeneous bystanders results in the emergence of hubs in a helping network. For more realistic consideration it is assumed that the agents are located on a one-dimensional lattice (ring), then the randomness $p \in [0,1]$ is introduced: the $kp$ random bystanders are randomly chosen from a whole population and the $k-kp$ near bystanders are chosen in the nearest order to the victim. We find that there appears another peak of the network density in the vicinity of $k=9$ and $p=0.3$ due to the cooperative and competitive interaction between the near and random bystanders.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Customer value co-creation behavior : scale development and validation

This investigation reports a series of four studies leading to the development and validation of a customer value co-creation behavior scale. The scale comprises two dimensions: customer participation behavior and customer citizenship behavior, with each dimension having four components. The elements of customer participation behavior include information seeking, information sharing, responsible behavior, and personal interaction, whereas the aspects of customer citizenship behavior are feedback, advocacy, helping, and tolerance. The scale is multidimensional and hierarchical, and it exhibits internal consistency reliability, construct validity, and nomological validity. This study also shows that customer participation behavior and customer citizenship behavior exhibit different patterns of antecedents and consequences

Individual differences in helping behavior

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to [email protected], referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 14-16).This study examined the relations among the personality dimension of agreeableness, empathy and pro-social behavior. College students (N=210) were randomly assigned to either a high or low empathy condition in which they listened to the story of a fellow student in need. After listening to the situation described in a supposed radio broadcast, participants were given an opportunity to help. Outcomes suggest individual differences in empathy and emotionality. Results were discussed in terms of agreeableness as a predictor of emotion variables

Patient Education and Consumer Activation in Chronic Disease

Presents suggestions from experts on patient and provider education, health behavior change, and information technologies for strategies, tactics, and activities for helping the chronically ill become active participants in their health and health care

Upstream reciprocity in heterogeneous networks

Many mechanisms for the emergence and maintenance of altruistic behavior in social dilemma situations have been proposed. Indirect reciprocity is one such mechanism, where other-regarding actions of a player are eventually rewarded by other players with whom the original player has not interacted. The upstream reciprocity (also called generalized indirect reciprocity) is a type of indirect reciprocity and represents the concept that those helped by somebody will help other unspecified players. In spite of the evidence for the enhancement of helping behavior by upstream reciprocity in rats and humans, theoretical support for this mechanism is not strong. In the present study, we numerically investigate upstream reciprocity in heterogeneous contact networks, in which the players generally have different number of neighbors. We show that heterogeneous networks considerably enhance cooperation in a game of upstream reciprocity. In heterogeneous networks, the most generous strategy, by which a player helps a neighbor on being helped and in addition initiates helping behavior, first occupies hubs in a network and then disseminates to other players. The scenario to achieve enhanced altruism resembles that seen in the case of the Prisoner's Dilemma game in heterogeneous networks.Comment: 10 figures, Journal of Theoretical Biology, in press (2010