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. 2007 Jun;18(2):88-108.
doi: 10.1007/s12110-007-9012-2. Epub 2007 Jul 4.

Engineering Human Cooperation : Does Involuntary Neural Activation Increase Public Goods Contributions?

Terence C Burnham  1 , Brian Hare  2
Affiliations

Engineering Human Cooperation : Does Involuntary Neural Activation Increase Public Goods Contributions?

Terence C Burnham et al. Hum Nat. 2007 Jun.

Abstract

In a laboratory experiment, we use a public goods game to examine the hypothesis that human subjects use an involuntary eye-detector mechanism for evaluating the level of privacy. Half of our subjects are "watched" by images of a robot presented on their computer screen. The robot-named Kismet and invented at MIT-is constructed from objects that are obviously not human with the exception of its eyes. In our experiment, Kismet produces a significant difference in behavior that is not consistent with existing economic models of preferences, either self- or other-regarding. Subjects who are "watched" by Kismet contribute 29% more to the public good than do subjects in the same setting without Kismet.

Keywords: Altruism; Proximate causation; Public goods; Reciprocity; Tinbergen.

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