ИСТИНА

Prosocial behaviour, being one of the fundamental features of human nature, played one of the key roles in the evolution of our species. For over a century, researchers have extensively studied this topic, and it still remains highly relevant today. One of the key areas of research is the role of emotions in fostering cooperation and regulating different forms of prosocial behaviour. Here we report on the results of an experimental study of prosocial behaviour of young modern representatives of the Russian population living in Moscow (N=172). The aim of the study was to assess the role of the emotional component in economic behaviour, as well as to assess potential sex differences in decision-making in a highly emotional context. The experiment involved four dyadic economic games: the Trust Game, the Prosocial Punishment Game, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and the Ultimatum Game. Accordingly, our study addresses such aspects of prosocial behaviour as (1) trust towards strangers; (2) individual propensity for costly punishment of selfish behaviour; (3) propensity to cooperate; (4) a sense of fairness and prosocial expectations. Each participant of the study made decisions in the experimental games sequentially, in the order presented above, once in each game. The outcome of the interaction in each of the games was determined by a separate payoff matrix (or specific rules) and was expressed in points, which at the end of the experiment were summed up across all games and exchanged for real money. In our experiment, the interaction partners of the participants were “actors” who were part of the research group. They made their decisions according to an identical scheme, independent of the decisions of the participants of the experiment. The entire study involved two “actors”, a man and a woman of Russian nationality, who interacted with male and female participants, respectively. Thus, each participant made decisions in relation to the same partner of the same sex during all four games. The experiment involved high emotional stress, which was realized through real-time face-to-face interactions, as well as extremely unfair behaviour of the partner (the “actor”) from the very beginning of the experiment. In particular, the first game, the Trust game, ended for all participants who trusted their funds to the partner with a complete loss of their points as a result of the extremely selfish partner’s decision. Today, there is a huge amount of research on how people, including those in Russia, behave in economic games under various experimental conditions. Using both theoretical and empirical data, it is possible to predict the expected distribution of strategies in these games when emotions are not a highly prominent factor. Since our experiment involved a high emotional load, our goal was to identify how participants' behaviours deviated from the neutral expectations in each game situation we examined, with the exception of the first game. The statistical analysis revealed that during face-to-face interactions, most participants were reluctant to impose costly punishment for their partner’s selfish behaviour. However, 34.4% of participants were still willing to spend their funds to deduct points from an unfair player and confront them directly about it. At the same time, 16.6% of participants used an extreme punishment strategy, spending all their available funds to zero out the capital of the selfish partner. We found significant sex differences, with women being more likely to use such “irrational” prosocial punishment than men. In the Prisoner’s Dilemma game that followed the Prosocial Punishment game, an atypical distribution of strategies was found, with the majority of decisions (56.8%) being non-cooperative. When analyzing sex differences, it turned out that the majority of women (59.4%) did not cooperate (given that the partner had shown selfish behaviour in the first experimental game), while the majority of men (60.3%) still chose cooperation. The decision to cooperate (or to defect) in the Prisoner’s Dilemma was unrelated to whether the participant had used prosocial punishment in the previous game or not, which was true for both men and women. The analysis of behaviour in the Ultimatum game following the Prisoner’s Dilemma did not reveal any atypical distributions, significant sex differences in decisions, or associations with decisions in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. However, a significant sex effect emerged when analyzing the relationship between behaviour in the Ultimatum game and decisions in the Prosocial Punishment game. Women, but not men, who used the extreme prosocial punishment strategy were characterized by fair behaviour in the Ultimatum game. This was expressed in the fact that they almost always (with two exceptions) offered to split the funds equally with their partner. All the effects discussed above are statistically significant. The results of our study indicate that men and women, representatives of modern Moscow youth, respond differently to the emotional aspects of economic interactions, particularly when dealing with a partner’s selfish or unfair behaviour. Women were more inclined to spend their funds to teach an unfair player a lesson. Additionally, they showed a greater tendency to refuse further cooperation with partners (who initially acted extremely selfishly), unlike men. This behaviour suggests that women may be more sensitive to negative emotions triggered by unfair actions. Participants who chose the extreme strategy of punishment – giving away all their funds to reduce the second player’s capital to zero – might have been motivated by a desire for fairness, aiming to equalize the scores after the uneven outcome of the first game. Notably, women who employed this strategy also demonstrated fairness in their decisions in the context of the Ultimatum game. This suggests a potential link between the emotions triggered by selfish behaviour and an individual’s sense of fairness. At this stage of the study, the final interpretation of the obtained results remains challenging. Without directly assessing the emotional responses of the participants, it’s hard to determine the reasons behind the observed differences or even to evaluate the “rationality” of certain individual strategies in the given contexts. In the near future, we plan to expand our analysis by incorporating methods for assessment of emotional reactions during the experimental interactions. The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, grant No. 24-18-00457.