Powell, P.A. orcid.org/0000-0003-1169-3431, Puustinen-Hopper, K., de Jode, M. et al. (2 more authors) (2018) Heart versus head: differential bodily feedback causally alters economic decision-making. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71 (9). pp. 1949-1959. ISSN 1747-0218
Abstract
Metaphorically, altruistic acts, such as monetary donations, are said to be driven by the heart, whereas sound financial investments are guided by reason, embodied by the head. In a unique experiment, we tested the effects of these bodily metaphors using biofeedback and an incentivized economic decision-making paradigm. Participants played a repeated investment game with a simulated partner, alternating between tactical investor and altruistic investee. When making decisions, participants received counterbalanced visual feedback from their own or a simulated partner’s heart or head, as well as no feedback. As investor, participants transferred a greater proportion of their endowments when exposed to visual feedback from their own head than to feedback from their own heart or no feedback at all. These effects were not observed when the source of the feedback was the simulated partner. As investee, heart feedback predicted greater altruistic returns than head or no feedback, but this effect did not differ based on source (own vs partner). Consistent with a dual-process framework, we suggest that people may be encouraged to invest more or be more altruistic when receiving bodily feedback from conceptually diametric sources.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 Experimental Psychology Society. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Keywords: | altruism; biofeedback; decision-making; economic game; embodied metaphor; investment |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Economics (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 29 Aug 2017 10:26 |
Last Modified: | 15 Mar 2024 15:30 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/17470218.2017.1373359 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:120389 |