Poster #75 - High Status Peers Influence Prosocial Behavior – Experimental Evidence From High School Social Networks

• In Event: Poster Session 05

Abstract

Individual preferences for fairness and prosocial behavior start to emerge during childhood (3-8 years) (Fehr et al., 2008), and further develop until early adulthood (Eisenberg et al., 2002). More specifically, it is during adolescence that motives for prosociality start to include considerations from the perspective of society (Crone & Fuligni, 2020). Adolescents engage in volunteering, political activism, often with personal costs (e.g., skipping schools, going against the will of parents and caregivers). Societies greatly benefit from prosocial contributions to the public good, and it is thus crucial to identify ways in which these behaviors could be encouraged. Here, we focus on the role of peer influence as a mechanism to boost adolescents’ prosocial decisions. Peer influence across multiple domains (e.g., risk-taking, norm following, decision-making) peaks in adolescence (Blakemore et al., 2018, Molleman et al., 2022), and is modulated by the relationship between peers: close friends and popular individuals are often the primary sources of social influence (Gradassi et al., 2022). In the domain of prosocial behavior, these effects were established in studies that were either addressing the role of peer status on hypothetical prosocial behavior (Choukas-Bradley et al., 2015), or the influence of anonymous peers on incentivized prosocial behavior (‎van Hoorn et al., 2016; Chierchia et al., 2020). To expand on this literature, we combined an experimental game (fig. 1A-B) with social network analysis (fig. 1C). We tested 1) if real peers can influence incentivized prosocial behavior, and 2) if this effect is modulated by peer status. Participants (N = 298; 13 classes; age 12-18; 37% female) played a 2-wave donation game where they could choose whether to keep 1 euro for themselves or donate it to real charities (24 in total; fig. 1A-B). During the first wave, they played alone, whereas during the second wave they were exposed to the real decisions of pre-selected classmates while making their donation decision. We systematically varied the social status of the observed peer (low vs. high), which was estimated using peer nomination data (fig. 1C). We show that adolescents tended to strongly conform to peer behavior, often reversing their initial preference. This pattern was especially strong when observing a high-status peer. Our findings support the hypothesis that high-status peers act as important signalers of social norms and can be instrumental in the development of prosocial attitudes. These results provide a potential path for interventions aimed at spreading cooperative norms and promoting prosocial preferences.

Authors

• Andrea Gradassi, University of Amsterdam
  Presenting Author

• Wouter Van den Bos, University of Amsterdam

• Lucas Molleman