A couple of frequently cited studies suggest that the presence of ‘eye images’ increase pro-social / cooperative behavior in natural and experimental settings.
According to these studies (most prominently by a group at Newcastle University around M Bateson and D Nettle), life-sized images of eyes seem to have an astonishing effect on cooperation levels.
Others (e.g. Fehr & Schneider, Raihani & Bshary 2012) found zero effect when investigating the impact of ‘eye cues’ on cooperativeness in their experimental studies. In a field study in a natural setting (forthcoming in Theory and Decision), we only find weak, statistically not significant effects of eye images on honesty (for details, please see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264556879_Eyes_on_social_norms_A_field_study_on_an_honor_system_for_newspaper_sale or http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11238-014-9460-1 )
I wonder if the effect of eye images is over-rated after all, maybe as a result of a publication bias – i.e. it is much easier to publish results than non-results in peer-reviewed journals.
I am interested in your opinions on that. I also wonder if you are aware of non-results of similar studies which have not been reported in Scopus-indexed journals.
Best regards,
Thomas
Article Eyes on social norms: A field study on an honor system for n...
My co-author, Richard E. Matland, and I just completed and submitted for review a study of using eyes to mobilize voters to the polls. We sent post cards with eyes in a number of cities and got no statistical effect and little to no substantive effect (compared to a control group). On the other hand, Costas Panagopoulos has two published pieces showing this technique can statistically but weakly mobilize voters. For me, I would not invest in this technique if I were managing a campaign. -- Gregg
Hey Thomas,
I do not know whether you already came across this paper, but I think it might be highly relevant to your question.
Carbon, C. C., & Hesslinger, V. M. (2011). Bateson et al.’s (2006) cues-of-being-watched paradigm revisited. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 70(4), 203-210.
Also, I do not know whether the effect has been overestimated. This is probably a question that has to be answered meta-analytically.
Best wishes,
Florian
Thank you for your valuable hints and opinions, Gregg, Florian & Daniela.
Obviously the fundamental problem here is that both replication studies and non-results are hard to publish, and might (if at all) often only be disseminated via conference proceedings, reports and working papers. (Maybe grey literature needs to be considered for meta analyses as well – and this of course brings up additional problems.) Moreover, replication studies are especially difficult for the quasi-experiments in the field which brought forth the most stunning results.
Anyway – I will follow-up this topic. Should you come across additional interesting findings, I appreciate your postings here.
I conducted the above mentioned study together with Thomas and other scholars. When we tried to get our paper published with a variety of journals it became obvious that some would not accept studiesnot delivering significant results. Some of them even mention that in their Journal "Aims and Scope". My understanding of empirical social Research however is based on the paradigm that one should learn and advance understanding in the same way from results regardless of them being significant or non-siginificant.
I agree with Nihola's Statement that if thre is an effect of eye-images fostering prosocial behaviour, it is context specific. One problem when investigating this topic is to isolate the effect from other effects that take place in the experimental setting. We conducted three more field experiments in a university setting related to (1) keeping restrooms clean, (2) retuning your plates at the canteen and (3) donations on free giveaways and found mixed results. The problem in all settings were the control of confounding variables, which was paractically impossible and other effects masked the eye-images.
An additional Approach to this topic could lie within a mixed-methods design. As it is hard to publish non-significant results one could try to underline them with qualitative data from direct Investigation of participants after taking part in the study, whether it is in the laboratory or in the field.
On the issue of -publication of null results this has been a big debate in POLI. SCI. and there are enough outlets that profess concern about this that we feel pretty confident that we will find a good journal to publish. As to the effect, in our case we wonder whether timing isn't crucial. As Gregg mentioned we don't find an effect but we are looking for an effect several days later. Bateson's effect is immediate. You see the eyes just as you're getting your coffee. There's a follow up where Bateson (?) put two eyes on one set of charity buckets and three starts on a different set of buckets at the end of check out aisles in supermarkets. They get an effect but it is much bigger when receipts are low (few people). So timing matters.
Maybe this study is of interest. It shows that there is no effect of being observed in a dictator game, but if dictators are being observed and receive written feedback from the observer, generosity increases.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487014000774
Evidence for a non-effect is growing:
"Artificial surveillance cues do not increase generosity" states a recently published meta-analysis by Northover et al. in Evolution and Human Behavior.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513816301350
we also found mixed results in vignette-study with students:
http://www.gesis.org/fileadmin/upload/forschung/publikationen/zeitschriften/mda/Vol.9_Heft_1/MDA_Vol9_2015-1_Liebig.pdf
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