The Effect Of Preference Cost On Social Mindfulness

Social mindfulness is a type of prosocial behavior that involves giving the other individual the right of choice by choosing a non-unique item in a resource allocation situation,thus satisfying others’ autonomous needs.In the previous study,social mindfulness is commonly thought of with very little cost.However,individuals may perceive different subjective values between unique and non-unique items,which leads to the existence of high or low preference costs of social mindfulness among different object situations,and influences whether individuals act socially mindfully or not.In addition,in the context of dual processing theory,regarding the question of which process mode of intuitive or deliberation is more helpful in promoting social mindfulness,there are contradictory predictions raised by different theoretical views,which are inconsistent with the most recent empirical findings.In this regard,consideration of the effect of cost factors may help to clarify the relationship between processing modes and social mindfulness.Based on the So Mi(social mindfulness)paradigm,this study defines preference cost as the loss of giving up preferred items for individuals to make a decision of social mindfulness.By designing an interaction task with high ecological validity,the study aimed to examine the effect of preference cost on social mindfulness,as reflected in two specific questions.The first question is whether and to what extent preference cost influences social mindfulness.The second question is whether preference cost moderates the effect of processing mode on social mindfulness.To answer the above questions,we conducted four experiments in this study.Experiment 1 used relative preference—the degree to which individuals favor the unique item beyond the other non-unique item—to reflect preference cost,and sought to test how strongly preference cost influences social mindfulness in an imagined interaction.The results showed that preference cost predicted negative social mindfulness significantly,namely the possibility of making a social mindfulness choice decreased non-linearly as preference cost increased.Experiment 2 used real interaction and possible rewards to create a real interaction situation,which again found that preference cost significantly predicted negative social mindfulness.The above results indicated that preference cost is an important factor for individuals to decide whether to act socially mindfully.In Experiments 3 and 4,we combined the So Mi paradigm and the two-response paradigm to test whether preference cost moderates the effect of processing mode on social mindfulness.In the two experiments,preference cost has two indicators: a dichotomous indicator(preference cost: yes,no)and a continuous indicator(relative preference).The results of experiment 3 showed that the continuous preference cost moderates the effect of processing modes on social mindfulness.The results of experiment 4 showed that both dichotomous and continuous preference costs moderated the effect of processing modes on social mindfulness.The above moderating effects implied that under different preference cost conditions,the processing model might have opposite effects on social mindfulness: when the preference cost was relatively high,intuitive processing could increase social mindfulness;when the preference cost was relatively low,deliberative processing could increase social mindfulness.Through the above four experiments,this study supported the effect of preference cost on social mindfulness,that is,preference cost not only significantly predicted negative social mindfulness,but may also moderates the effect of processing mode(intuition vs.deliberation)on social mindfulness.Finally,the study has implications for improving the So Mi paradigm to measure social mindfulness better and also provides a theoretical and practical basis for promoting social mindfulness effectively.