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Journal of Political Economy Vol. 128 No. 2 2020

The Formation of Prosociality: Causal Evidence on the Role of Social Environment

Fabian Kosse1; Thomas Deckers2; Pia Pinger; Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch3,4; Armin Falk2,5

1 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München · 2 University of Bonn · 3 IZA - Institute of Labor Economics · 4 Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf · 5 BRIQ Institute on Behavior and Inequality

open access

Abstract

This study presents evidence on the role of social environment for the formation of prosociality. We show that socioeconomic status (SES) as well as intensity of mother-child interaction and mothers? prosocial attitudes are related to elementary school children?s prosociality. We also present evidence on a randomly assigned variation of the social environment, providing children with a mentor for 1 year. Our data reveal a significant and persistent increase in prosociality in the treatment relative to the control group. Moreover, enriching the social environment closes the prosociality gap between low- and high-SES children. A mediation analysis suggests that prosociality develops in response to prosocial role models and intense social interactions.

DOI
10.1086/704386
Volume
128
Issue
2
Pages
434-467
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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