Generalized Reciprocity: Can Generosity Become Contagious?

每天，数以百万计的人献血，停下来帮助一名滞留的司机，参与无偿调查，评论餐馆，离开在线产品评级，在Ask.com上回答问题，向开源软件贡献代码，编辑维基百科文章，这些往往是匿名的，没有社会认可，也没有机会从直接回报中受益。这种帮助陌生人的普遍意愿构成了一个具有巨大实践意义的有趣的理论谜题。解开这个谜题的一个重要关键可能是，帮助行为可能会传染--人们对帮助的反应是将帮助转给第三人。这种行为被称为“广义互惠”，有可能引发一系列帮助，远远超出最初的行为。广义互惠是关于社会传染和利他行为的两个基本互不相关的现有文献。结合这两个研究传统，该项目确定并测试了四个特定的条件，这些条件预计会改变受助者向前提供帮助的概率：小组规模、对其他人普遍互惠的观察、从其他人那里获得帮助的人数，以及将受益的其他人的人数。数据将从在线劳动力市场的大型现场实验中收集，并通过在传统实验室环境中运行的小团体实验进行验证。这一结果将促进有关帮助行为及其传播的理论知识，以及在线研究的新方法，包括社会学内部和多个领域，包括社会心理学、行为经济学、道德哲学、计算机科学、传播学和信息科学。广泛互惠的潜在连锁反应意味着，当我们帮助他人时，我们也可能间接帮助许多人--包括线上和线下--通过更有效地针对过去受益的人来动员自愿捐款。此外，该项目将为科学界开发和展示一种可适用于广泛的其他决策和传播研究的大型在线实地实验的创新方法，从而为科学界带来实际利益。

Every day, millions of people donate blood, stop to help a stranded motorist, participate in unpaid surveys, review restaurants, leave online product ratings, answer questions on Ask.com, contribute code to open-source software, and edit Wikipedia articles, often anonymously, without social recognition or opportunity to benefit from direct reciprocation. This widespread willingness to help a stranger poses a fascinating theoretical puzzle with enormous practical implications. An important key to the puzzle may be the possibility that helping behavior can be contagious--people respond to being helped by "paying it forward" to a third person. Known as "generalized reciprocity," this behavior has the potential to trigger a chain of helping that reaches far beyond the original act. Generalized reciprocity bridges two largely disconnected existing literatures on social contagion and altruistic behavior. Integrating these two research traditions, this project identifies and tests four specific conditions expected to alter the probability that a recipient of help will pay it forward: group size, observation of generalized reciprocity by others, the number of others from whom help has been received, and the number of others who will benefit. Data will be collected from a large field experiment in an online labor market and validated with a small-group experiment run in a traditional laboratory setting. The results will advance theoretical knowledge about helping behavior and its diffusion, as well as new methodologies for online research, both within sociology and across multiple fields, including social psychology, behavioral economics, moral philosophy, computer science, communication, and information science.Broader ImpactThe potential ripple effect of generalized reciprocity means that when we help others, we may also be indirectly helping many -- both online and offline -- to mobilize voluntary contributions by more effectively targeting those who have benefited in the past. In addition, the project will have practical benefits for the scientific community by developing and demonstrating an innovative method for large online field experiments that can be adapted for a wide range of other studies of decision-making and diffusion.