Have Being Selfish Affects Reproduction and Earnings

Summary: A new study reports selfish people are more likely to have less children and earn less money than their more generous peers.

Source: University of Stockholm.

What happens to those who behave unselfishly and make sacrifices for the sake of others? According to an interdisciplinary study by researchers from Stockholm University, the Institute for Futures Studies and the University of South Carolina, unselfish people tend both to have more children and to receive higher salaries, in comparison to more selfish people. The results have now been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“The result is clear in both the American and the European data. The most unselfish people have the most children and the moderately unselfish receive the highest salaries. And we also find this result over time – the people who are most generous at one point in time have the largest salary increases when researchers revisit them later in time,” says Kimmo Eriksson, researcher at the Centre for Cultural Evolution at Stockholm University and one of the authors of the study “Generosity pays: Selfish people have fewer children and earn less money”.

The result is contrary to theories that selfish people manage to get their hands on more money through their selfishness, as suggested in previous research.

Previous psychological and sociological research has shown that unselfish people are happier and have better social relationships. The study “Generosity pays: Selfish people have fewer children and earn less money” focuses on unselfishness from an economical and evolutionary perspective. In this collaboration with the Institute for Futures Studies and the University of South Carolina, researchers at Stockholm University have looked at how selfishness relates to income and fertility. Selfishness was measured partly through attitudes and partly through reported behaviors.* The results are based on analyses of four major studies of Americans and Europeans.

“In a separate study, we examined the expectations of ordinary people to see if their expectations aligned with our data. The results of this study showed that people generally have the correct expectation that selfish people have fewer children, but erroneously believe that selfish people will make more money. It is nice to see that generosity so often pays off in the long run,” says Pontus Strimling, a researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies, who is also one of the authors behind the study.

Handing over money NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to Andy Dean.

The authors themselves believe that improved social relationships may be the key to generous peoples’ success from an economic perspective, but note that their research does not definitely answer this question.

“Future research will have to delve deeper into the reasons why generous people earn more, and look at whether the link between unselfishness, higher salaries and more children also exists in other parts of the world. And it is of course debatable how unselfish it really is to have more children,” says co-author Brent Simpson of University of South Carolina.

About this neuroscience research article

*Unselfishness is defined in the study as the desire to help others because you care about their welfare. Therefore, attitudes concern how important a person thinks it is to help others and care about their welfare. The behaviors concerned how often and how much the person engaged in various help behaviours, e.g. giving money or their time to help others.

Source: University of Stockholm
Publisher: Organized by NeuroscienceNews.com.
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to Andy Dean.
Original Research: Abstract for “Generosity pays: Selfish people have fewer children and earn less money” by Eriksson, Kimmo; Vartanova, Irina; Strimling, Pontus; and Simpson, Brent in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Published October 17 2018.
doi:10.1037/pspp0000213

Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article

[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]University of Stockholm”Have Being Selfish Affects Reproduction and Earnings.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 17 October 2018.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/selfish-reproduction-earnings-10040/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]University of Stockholm(2018, October 17). Have Being Selfish Affects Reproduction and Earnings. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved October 17, 2018 from https://neurosciencenews.com/selfish-reproduction-earnings-10040/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]University of Stockholm”Have Being Selfish Affects Reproduction and Earnings.” https://neurosciencenews.com/selfish-reproduction-earnings-10040/ (accessed October 17, 2018).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]


Abstract

Generosity pays: Selfish people have fewer children and earn less money

Does selfishness pay in the long term? Previous research has indicated that being prosocial (or otherish) rather than selfish has positive consequences for psychological well-being, physical health, and relationships. Here we instead examine the consequences for individuals’ incomes and number of children, as these are the currencies that matter most in theories that emphasize the power of self-interest, namely economics and evolutionary thinking. Drawing on both cross-sectional (Studies 1 and 2) and panel data (Studies 3 and 4), we find that prosocial individuals tend to have more children and higher income than selfish individuals. An additional survey (Study 5) of lay beliefs about how self-interest impacts income and fertility suggests one reason selfish people may persist in their behavior even though it leads to poorer outcomes: people generally expect selfish individuals to have higher incomes. Our findings have implications for lay decisions about the allocation of scarce resources, as well as for economic and evolutionary theories of human behavior.

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