Gambling on Others’ Health: Risky Pro-social Decision-Making in the Era of Covid19

How does cost and uncertainty shape an ordinary person’s action towards a stranger’s wellbeing? During the Covid19 pandemic, individuals were asked to perform costly actions to reduce harm to strangers, even while the general population, including authorities and experts, grappled with the uncertainty surrounding the novel virus. Many researches have examined health decision-making by experts, but the study of lay, non-expert, individuals decision-making on a stranger’s health has been left to the wayside, as ordinary citizens are usually not tasked with such decisions. We sought to capture a snapshot of this specific choice behavior by administering two surveys to the general population in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. We presented respondents with hypothetical diseases of variable severity affecting either oneself, a beloved person or a stranger. Participants had to choose between treatments who could either lead to a certain mild improvement (sure option) or cure entirely the effected person at a given probability (risky option). Respondents preferred risky options overall, but their risk-seeking attitude decreased progressively the higher the expected severity of the disease. This pattern was observed regardless of the identity of recipient. Instead, distinctions between targets emerged when decisions were conditioned on treatment cost, with participants preferring cheaper options for strangers. Overall, these findings provide a descriptive model of individual risky decision-making for others; and inform on the limits of what can be asked of an individual in service to a stranger.

Loued-Khenissi, L., & Corradi-Dell'Acqua, C. (2020). Gambling on Others’ Health: Risky Pro-social Decision-Making in the Era of Covid19. PsyArXiv, doi: 110.31234/osf.io/qrbza

如何成本与不确定性塑造了普通人对陌生人福祉行为的决策？在新冠疫情期间，个人被要求采取代价高昂的行动以减少对陌生人的伤害，尽管包括权威和专家在内的广大民众仍在应对围绕新型病毒的未知因素。众多研究已探讨专家的健康决策，但关于普通非专业人士对陌生人健康决策的研究却鲜有涉及，因为普通公民通常不会被赋予此类决策任务。我们试图捕捉这一特定选择行为的快照，通过对新冠疫情期间早期民众进行两次调查来实现。我们向受访者呈现了不同程度严重性的假设疾病，影响对象包括自己、心爱的人或陌生人。参与者需要在可能导致一定程度的温和改善（确定选项）或以一定概率完全治愈受影响者的治疗方案（风险选项）之间做出选择。受访者整体倾向于选择风险选项，但随着预期疾病严重程度的增加，他们的风险寻求态度逐渐降低。这一模式无论受助者的身份如何都得以观察到。相反，当决策取决于治疗成本时，目标之间的差异开始显现，参与者更倾向于为陌生人选择成本较低的治疗方案。总体而言，这些发现为他人风险决策提供了一个描述性模型，并揭示了在为陌生人服务时对个人可以提出的要求的界限。