None
Friday, 28 October 2016

Researchers from The University of Western Australia have conducted a social experiment to discover if the socioeconomic status of a suburb has an effect on altruistic behavior – in this case returning a lost letter.

The experiment involved six UWA students deliberately dropping 300 letters, half of them stamped, half of them unstamped, on the ground in 15 residential suburbs of varying socioeconomic status around Perth, to see which ones would be returned.

After counting the letters that were returned, the researchers concluded that a suburb’s socioeconomic index had a significant effect on whether a letter was returned. Also, altruistic acts, unselfish acts in which one person seeks to help another, decrease in frequency when costs increase, even minimally.

Out of 300 letters, a total of 92 stamped and 42 unstamped letters were returned.

The study has been published here.

Similar studies have been carried out before, involving dropping letters to see which ones would be returned, but this time researchers applied a simultaneous element by introducing cost – the price of a postage stamp for the unstamped letters.

The lead author of the study, Dr Cyril Grueter, from UWA’s School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, said he predicted that spontaneous voluntary acts to help others would be less in prevalent in areas of low socioeconomic status.

“Other studies have already concluded that poorer neighbourhoods are characterised by low neighbourhood quality, high crime rates and low social capital and trust, and low rates of civic engagement” Dr Grueter said.

“Our findings show that the willingness of individuals within a community to be altruistic decreases with increasing costs as well as social disadvantage.

“These results can aid charities and other crowd-funded organisations in directing their efforts to where they will likely receive the greatest return. Data such as the ones collected in this study provide a reflection of community attitudes and may therefore prove relevant to municipal government for policy development and intervention.”

Media references

David Stacey (UWA Media Manager)                                   (+61 8) 6488 3229 / (+61 4) 32 637 716

Tags

Channels
Media Statements — University News
Groups
Science Matters