Electric Shock Study Suggests We'd Rather Hurt Ourselves Than Others

Posted by Soulskill on Monday November 17, 2014 @03:28PM from the unless-it's-over-the-internet dept.

sciencehabit writes: If you had the choice between hurting yourself or someone else in exchange for money, how altruistic do you think you'd be? In one infamous experiment, people were quite willing to deliver painful shocks to anonymous victims when asked by a scientist. But a new study that forced people into the dilemma of choosing between pain and profit finds that participants cared more about other people's well-being than their own. It is hailed as the first hard evidence of altruism for the young field of behavioral economics.

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Re:How much money ? by Your.Master · 2014-11-17 16:47 · Score: 4, Informative

The article has a bit more info.
Spoiler alert: the shock is calibrated to each person to be "painful but not intolerable", and it's about 30 cents a shock for yourself or 60 cents a shock to others.
There may be an initial threshold -- my understanding is that the question would be something like:
"Would you rather be shocked 10 times and get $7 or shocked 20 times and get $9", or "Would you rather be shocked 5 times for $5 or have this chick get shocked 3 times for $4", not necessarily giving a 0 shocks = $0 option.