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Updated: Jun 9, 2025

Analyzing Spatial Learning and Prosocial Behavior in Mice Using the Barnes Maze and Damsel-in-Distress Paradigms
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Why scarcity can both increase and decrease prosocial behaviour: A review and theoretical framework for the complex

Claudia Civai1, Christian T Elbaek2, Valerio Capraro3

  • 1City St George's, University of London, United Kingdom.

Current Opinion in Psychology
|October 23, 2024
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Scarcity shifts attention and increases cognitive load, influencing social behavior through heuristic thinking. Individual and contextual factors moderate these effects, impacting outcomes like parochialism.

Keywords:
Behavioural changeParochialismProsocialityScarcity mindsetSocial expectations

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Area of Science:

  • Social Psychology
  • Behavioral Economics
  • Sociology

Background:

  • Mixed findings exist regarding scarcity's impact on social behavior.
  • Recent scholarship across disciplines explores this phenomenon.
  • A need exists to synthesize existing literature and provide a coherent framework.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review and synthesize recent literature on scarcity and social behavior.
  • To propose a novel framework for understanding scarcity's effects.
  • To apply the framework to explain scarcity's influence on parochialism.

Main Methods:

  • Systematic literature review of recent studies on scarcity and social behavior.
  • Development of a theoretical framework integrating attentional and cognitive load mechanisms.
  • Application of the framework to specific social behaviors, such as parochialism.

Main Results:

  • Scarcity induces an attentional shift towards the scarce resource.
  • Scarcity increases cognitive load, promoting heuristic thinking.
  • Social behavior is modulated by transient and enduring individual and contextual factors.

Conclusions:

  • The proposed framework offers a unified explanation for how scarcity affects social behavior.
  • Scarcity's influence on parochialism is explained through the framework's mechanisms.
  • Caution is advised against the uncritical use of scarcity salience for behavioral modification.