Journal article

Acute hunger does not always undermine prosociality


Authors listHaeusser, Jan A.; Stahlecker, Christina; Mojzisch, Andreas; Leder, Johannes; Van Lange, Paul A. M.; Faber, Nadira S.

Publication year2019

JournalNature Communications

Volume number10

eISSN2041-1723

Open access statusGold

DOI Linkhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12579-7

PublisherNature Research


Abstract
It has been argued that, when they are acutely hungry, people act in self-protective ways by keeping resources to themselves rather than sharing them. In four studies, using experimental, quasi-experimental, and correlational designs (total N = 795), we examine the effects of acute hunger on prosociality in a wide variety of non-interdependent tasks (e.g. dictator game) and interdependent tasks (e.g. public goods games). While our procedures successfully increase subjective hunger and decrease blood glucose, we do not find significant effects of hunger on prosociality. This is true for both decisions incentivized with money and with food. Meta-analysis across all tasks reveals a very small effect of hunger on prosociality in non-interdependent tasks (d = 0.108), and a non-significant effect in interdependent tasks (d = -0.076). In study five (N = 197), we show that, in stark contrast to our empirical findings, people hold strong lay theories that hunger undermines prosociality.



Citation Styles

Harvard Citation styleHaeusser, J., Stahlecker, C., Mojzisch, A., Leder, J., Van Lange, P. and Faber, N. (2019) Acute hunger does not always undermine prosociality, Nature Communications, 10, Article 4733. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12579-7

APA Citation styleHaeusser, J., Stahlecker, C., Mojzisch, A., Leder, J., Van Lange, P., & Faber, N. (2019). Acute hunger does not always undermine prosociality. Nature Communications. 10, Article 4733. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12579-7



Keywords


DILEMMASGAMESMINDFULNESSPSYCHOLOGYRESOURCESSOCIAL VALUE ORIENTATION

Last updated on 2025-10-06 at 11:05