title: Prosocial values and group assortation : Within an N-person prisoner's dilemma game.
abstract: Ninety-five freshmen each recruited three peers to play a "group bidding game," an N-person prisoner's dilemma in which anyone could win movie tickets depending on their scores in the game. Prior to playing, all participants completed a measure of prosocial value orientation. Replicating and extending earlier findings (Sheldon and McGregor 2000), our results show that prosocial participants were at a disadvantage within groups. Despite this vulnerability, prosocial participants did no worse overall than asocial participants because a counteracting group-level advantage arose for prosocials, who tended to be concentrated in groups. Implications of this assortative process for the egoism/altruism debate, and for hierarchical selection theory, are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia, 65211, Columbia, MO. SheldonK@missouri.edu.
authors.forename: K M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Sheldon
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia, 65211, Columbia, MO.
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Sheldon
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia, 65211, Columbia, MO.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Osbaldiston
keywords: Assortation; Group selection; Prisoner’s dilemma; Prosocial values