IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0109687.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Risking Your Life without a Second Thought: Intuitive Decision-Making and Extreme Altruism

Author

Listed:
  • David G Rand
  • Ziv G Epstein

Abstract

When faced with the chance to help someone in mortal danger, what is our first response? Do we leap into action, only later considering the risks to ourselves? Or must instinctive self-preservation be overcome by will-power in order to act? We investigate this question by examining the testimony of Carnegie Hero Medal Recipients (CHMRs), extreme altruists who risked their lives to save others. We collected published interviews with CHMRs where they described their decisions to help. We then had participants rate the intuitiveness versus deliberativeness of the decision-making process described in each CHMR statement. The statements were judged to be overwhelmingly dominated by intuition; to be significantly more intuitive than a set of control statements describing deliberative decision-making; and to not differ significantly from a set of intuitive control statements. This remained true when restricting to scenarios in which the CHMRs had sufficient time to reflect before acting if they had so chosen. Text-analysis software found similar results. These findings suggest that high-stakes extreme altruism may be largely motivated by automatic, intuitive processes.

Suggested Citation

  • David G Rand & Ziv G Epstein, 2014. "Risking Your Life without a Second Thought: Intuitive Decision-Making and Extreme Altruism," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(10), pages 1-6, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0109687
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0109687
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0109687
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0109687&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0109687?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Coren L. Apicella & Frank W. Marlowe & James H. Fowler & Nicholas A. Christakis, 2012. "Social networks and cooperation in hunter-gatherers," Nature, Nature, vol. 481(7382), pages 497-501, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christian Hilbe & Moshe Hoffman & Martin A. Nowak, 2015. "Cooperate without Looking in a Non-Repeated Game," Games, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-15, September.
    2. Shawn A. Rhoads & Kruti M. Vekaria & Katherine O’Connell & Hannah S. Elizabeth & David G. Rand & Megan N. Kozak Williams & Abigail A. Marsh, 2023. "Unselfish traits and social decision-making patterns characterize six populations of real-world extraordinary altruists," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-15, December.
    3. Daniel FARHAT, 2023. "The economics and evolution of heroic behavior," Theoretical and Applied Economics, Asociatia Generala a Economistilor din Romania / Editura Economica, vol. 0(3(636), A), pages 5-20, Autumn.
    4. Artavia-Mora, Luis & Bedi, Arjun S. & Rieger, Matthias, 2017. "Intuitive help and punishment in the field," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 133-145.
    5. David G Rand & Gordon Kraft-Todd & June Gruber, 2015. "The Collective Benefits of Feeling Good and Letting Go: Positive Emotion and (dis)Inhibition Interact to Predict Cooperative Behavior," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, January.
    6. repec:cup:judgdm:v:15:y:2020:i:6:p:1037-1043 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Bault, Nadège & Fahrenfort, Johannes J. & Pelloux, Benjamin & Ridderinkhof, K. Richard & van Winden, Frans, 2017. "An affective social tie mechanism: Theory, evidence, and implications," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 152-175.
    8. Ma-Kellams, Christine & Lerner, Jennifer S., 2016. "Trust Your Gut or Think Carefully? Examining Whether an Intuitive versus a Systematic Mode of Thought Produces Greater Empathic Accuracy," Working Paper Series 16-017, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    9. Sachin Banker & Joowon Park, 2020. "Evaluating prosocial COVID-19 messaging frames: Evidence from a field study on Facebook," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 15(6), pages 1037-1043, November.
    10. Ma-Kellams, Christine & Lerner, Jennifer, 2016. "Trust your gut or think carefully? Examining whether an intuitive, versus a systematic, mode of thought produces greater empathic accuracy," Scholarly Articles 37093806, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    11. Artavia-Mora, Luis & Bedi, Arjun S. & Rieger, Matthias, 2018. "Help, Prejudice and Headscarves," IZA Discussion Papers 11460, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Jeremy Cone & David G Rand, 2014. "Time Pressure Increases Cooperation in Competitively Framed Social Dilemmas," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(12), pages 1-13, December.
    13. Herzenstein, Michal & Dholakia, Utpal M. & Sonenshein, Scott, 2020. "How the number of options affects prosocial choice," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 356-370.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bryan S. Graham, 2017. "An econometric model of network formation with degree heterogeneity," CeMMAP working papers 08/17, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    2. Gabriele Chierchia & Fabio Tufano & Giorgio Coricelli, 2017. "Friends or Strangers? Strategic Uncertainty and Cooperation across Experimental Games of Strategic Complements and Substitutes," Discussion Papers 2017-03, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    3. José Ignacio Santos & María Pereda & Débora Zurro & Myrian Álvarez & Jorge Caro & José Manuel Galán & Ivan Briz i Godino, 2015. "Effect of Resource Spatial Correlation and Hunter-Fisher-Gatherer Mobility on Social Cooperation in Tierra del Fuego," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-29, April.
    4. Burton-Chellew, Maxwell, 2022. "The restart effect in social dilemmas shows humans are self-interested not altruistic," SocArXiv hgznu, Center for Open Science.
    5. Siobhán M. Mattison & Neil G. MacLaren & Ruizhe Liu & Adam Z. Reynolds & Gabrielle D. Baca & Peter M. Mattison & Meng Zhang & Chun-Yi Sum & Mary K. Shenk & Tami Blumenfield & Christopher von Rueden & , 2021. "Gender Differences in Social Networks Based on Prevailing Kinship Norms in the Mosuo of China," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-19, July.
    6. Huang, Keke & Zheng, Xiaoping & Yang, Yeqing & Wang, Tao, 2015. "Behavioral evolution in evacuation crowd based on heterogeneous rationality of small groups," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 266(C), pages 501-506.
    7. Gabriele Chierchia & Fabio Tufano & Giorgio Coricelli, 2020. "The differential impact of friendship on cooperative and competitive coordination," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 89(4), pages 423-452, November.
    8. Perkins, Jessica M. & Subramanian, S.V. & Christakis, Nicholas A., 2015. "Social networks and health: A systematic review of sociocentric network studies in low- and middle-income countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 60-78.
    9. Jelena Grujić & Torsten Röhl & Dirk Semmann & Manfred Milinski & Arne Traulsen, 2012. "Consistent Strategy Updating in Spatial and Non-Spatial Behavioral Experiments Does Not Promote Cooperation in Social Networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-8, November.
    10. Marco Battaglini & Valerio Leone Sciabolazza & Eleonora Patacchini, 2020. "Effectiveness of Connected Legislators," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(4), pages 739-756, October.
    11. Centofanti, Tiziana & Murugesan, Anand, 2022. "Leader and citizens participation for the environment: Experimental evidence from Eastern Europe," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    12. Bryan S. Graham, 2019. "Network Data," Papers 1912.06346, arXiv.org.
    13. Hirofumi Takesue, 2020. "From defection to ingroup favoritism to cooperation: simulation analysis of the social dilemma in dynamic networks," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 3(1), pages 189-207, April.
    14. Michael Kurtz & Steven Furnagiev & Rebecca Forbes, 2023. "A field study on the role of incidental emotions on charitable giving," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 94(1), pages 167-181, January.
    15. Jiang, Zhi-Qiang & Wang, Peng & Ma, Jun-Chao & Zhu, Peican & Han, Zhen & Podobnik, Boris & Stanley, H. Eugene & Zhou, Wei-Xing & Alfaro-Bittner, Karin & Boccaletti, Stefano, 2023. "Unraveling the effects of network, direct and indirect reciprocity in online societies," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    16. Dimitrios Tsiotas & Serafeim Polyzos, 2021. "Making the Web-Science Operational for Interregional Commuting Analysis: Evidence from Greece," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 12(2), pages 1-14, June.
    17. Bryan S. Graham, 2017. "An Econometric Model of Network Formation With Degree Heterogeneity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 1033-1063, July.
    18. Sun, Guang-Zhen, 2017. "The Samuelson condition and the Lindahl scheme in networks," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 73-80.
    19. Brice Romuald Gueyap Kounga, 2023. "Nonparametric Regression with Dyadic Data," Papers 2310.12825, arXiv.org.
    20. Tiziano Arduini & Eleonora Patacchini & Edoardo Rainone, 2015. "Parametric and Semiparametric IV Estimation of Network Models with Selectivity," EIEF Working Papers Series 1509, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised Oct 2015.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0109687. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.