Avoiding Pain to Others Motivates Effortful Prosocial Behavior

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Behavioral Economics

Background:

• Societal well-being depends on protecting others from harm, which often requires effort.
• The decision-making process balancing effort costs against harm avoidance benefits for others is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how individuals decide to exert physical effort to alleviate pain for themselves and others.
• To compare effort-based decision-making for self- vs. other-focused pain reduction.

Main Methods:

• Participants exerted physical effort (force) to reduce painful electric shocks delivered to themselves and another person.
• Willingness to incur effort costs and the amount of force exerted were measured.
• Pain reduction by effort was analyzed for self- and other-related choices.

Main Results:

• No significant differences were found in participants' willingness to exert effort or the force applied to reduce their own pain versus another person's pain.
• Little evidence suggested differential discounting of pain reduction by effort between self- and other-related decisions.
• Results contrast with findings on monetary rewards, where less effort is exerted for others.

Conclusions:

• Individuals are comparably motivated to exert effort to avoid pain for themselves and others.
• Effortful prosocial behavior is significantly motivated by the prospect of preventing harm to others.
• The nature of the benefit (pain avoidance vs. monetary gain) critically influences prosocial motivation and effort allocation.