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Measuring the Distribution of Spitefulness

Resource type
Date created
2012
Authors/Contributors
Abstract
Spiteful, antisocial behavior may undermine the moral and institutional fabric of society, producing disorder, fear, and mistrust. Previous research demonstrates the willingness of individuals to harm others, but little is understood about how far people are willing to go in being spiteful (relative to how far they could have gone) or their consistency in spitefulness across repeated trials. Our experiment is the first to provide individuals with repeated opportunities to spitefully harm anonymous others when the decision entails zero cost to the spiter and cannot be observed as such by the object of spite. This method reveals that the majority of individuals exhibit consistent (non-)spitefulness over time and that the distribution of spitefulness is bipolar: when choosing whether to be spiteful, most individuals either avoid spite altogether or impose the maximum possible harm on their unwitting victims.
Document
Published as
Kimbrough EO, Reiss JP (2012) Measuring the Distribution of Spitefulness. PLoS ONE 7(8): e41812. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0041812
Publication title
PLoS ONE
Document title
Measuring the Distribution of Spitefulness
Date
2012
Volume
7
Issue
8
Publisher DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0041812
Copyright statement
Copyright is held by the author(s).
Permissions
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit this work under the following conditions: You must give attribution to the work (but not in any way that suggests that the author endorses you or your use of the work); You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
Scholarly level
Peer reviewed?
Yes
Language
English
Member of collection
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journal.pone_.0041812.pdf 551.61 KB

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