The Effect Of Interaction Object Similarity And Return Prediction On Altruistic Decision-Making In Social Comparison Situations

Altruistic decision-making is an important part of social decisionmaking,a weighing of whether people benefit others and the degree of altruism.Altruistic decision-making is also an important form of interpersonal interaction,which is the social connection embodied by the individual in the balance of interests between self and others.This study comprehensively considers the social situation factors,recipient factors and helper factors that affect altruistic decision-making,and examines the effects of three factors on altruistic decisions: social comparison direction,interaction object similarity,and return prediction,and their interaction effects.This study consists of three parts.Study 1 initially explored the influence of social comparison direction on altruistic decision-making based on a learning situation closely related to college subjects using a score tradeoff task.Study 2 added the recipient factors that influence altruistic decision-making,and explores the co-influence of interaction object similarity and social comparison direction on altruistic decisionmaking.Based on the first two studies,Study 3 added the factor of return prediction to further analyze the joint effects of these three factors of interaction object similarity,return expectation and social comparison direction on altruistic decision-making in the social comparison context.The main findings obtained from the study are as follows:(1)There is a significant effect of social comparison direction on altruistic decision-making,and individuals after upward social comparison have higher levels of altruistic decision making and exhibit more altruistic behaviors compared to those who perform downward social comparison.(2)The direction of social comparison and the similarity of the interaction objects have an important impact on the outcome of altruistic decision-making,and in general,in the social comparison context,the altruistic behavior when the interaction objects are similar is significantly higher than when the interaction objects are not similar.At the same time,the influence of social comparison direction on altruistic decision-making will change with the change of similarity of interaction objects,specifically,when the interaction objects are similar,the difference in altruistic decision-making between different social comparison directions is not significant.When the objects of interaction are not similar,the altruistic behavior of individuals after upward comparison is significantly higher than that of downward social comparison.(3)Social comparison direction,interaction object similarity and return prediction jointly influenced individuals’ altruistic decisions.The effect of return expectation on altruistic decision differs when the social comparison direction and interaction object similarity are different.Specifically,when return expectations are high,individuals’ altruistic decisions are significantly higher after upward social comparison than after downward social comparison,regardless of whether the interaction objects are similar or dissimilar.When return expectations are low,individuals’ altruistic decisions are higher after the upward social comparison compared to the downward social comparison when the interaction objects are similar;when the interaction objects are not similar,there is no significant difference between the altruistic decision-making after the upward social comparison and the downward social comparison.