| Prosocial behavior is based on cost-benefit decisions,in which individuals need to weigh the costs they pay against the benefits for others.Previous research has typically examined prosocial motivation in terms of the individual’s time,money,and morality as costs,and less often in terms of the effort the individual puts forth as a cost.In general,prosocial behavior often requires individuals to put in effort,and as an internal resource,putting in altruistic effort may be different from putting in external costs such as money.The present study attempts to explore people’s prosocial effort decision-making behavior and its internal mechanisms.The study consisted of 3 experiments.Experiment 1 explored the differences in prosocial effort decision-making and self-interested effort decision-making behaviors by using an effort-based decision-making paradigm,controlling for individual ability factors,and calculating the rate at which subjects exerted effort by manipulating effort and reward levels and beneficiary subject identity.Experiment 2 explored the moderating mechanism of prosocial effort decision-making behavior by introducing moral identity variables based on Experiment 1.Experiment 3,based on Experiment 2,added an observation condition to examine the effect of reputation on prosocial effort decision-making behavior to clarify the underlying explanation of the moderating role of moral identity in prosocial effort decision making.The results found that(1)Individuals exerted significantly lower effort for others than they did for themselves.(2)Beneficiary subjects moderated the effects of effort level as well as reward level on effort payout,with individual effort payout decreasing more when for others(vs.self)as effort level increased,and individual effort payout increasing more when for self(vs.others)as reward level increased.(3)Effort discount for others is greater than for oneself.(4)The level of moral identity moderated the influence of beneficiary subjects on effort payout rate,and the difference in effort payout for self-others was smaller for high moral identity individuals than for low moral identity individuals.(5)In prosocial effort decisionmaking,moral identity moderates individuals’ attention to altruistic effort levels but not to altruistic reward levels,and individuals with high moral identity adjust their altruistic effort payout rates according to changes in effort levels.In conclusion,this study found that people are less willing to make efforts for others than for themselves,and individuals are more sensitive to efforts when they are for others,with their decisions focus on the amount of effort exerted,and individuals are more sensitive to rewards when they are for themselves,with their decisions focus on the amount of rewards,and that the prosocial effort discount is greater than the self-interested effort discount.Individuals with high moral identity are more selfless and will put more prosocial effort into others,and moral identity is more closely tied to altruistic effort than to altruistic rewards. |
