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A long-standing discussion in economics asks whether institutions affect people’s social predispositions. The current experiment tests whether different aspects of markets affect people’s social preferences. The results are that people are less socially minded in more anonymous settings. Additionally, market competition erodes social preferences through two mechanisms. First, market competition encourages opportunistic behavior, and second, the market institution itself decreases the other-regardingness of the participants.
Jeffrey P. Carpenter (Tue,) studied this question.