A test to confirm the neighbour effect

Abstract

Introduction:- We demonstrated previously that people show a profound underlying ‘neighbour effect’ by significantly avoiding doing ‘bad’ things to their direct spatial neighbours. This emerged when the ‘bad’ thing was voting for a fellow contestant on the UK version of the ‘Weakest Link’ TV quiz programme (Goddard et al 2013; Noh et al, 2014). Aims:-We wanted to test how robust this ‘neighbour effect’ was by first observing whether it would extend to other voting scenarios and second to test whether it occurred for doing ‘good’ as well as ‘bad’ things. Method:- Participants were first year students seated in a lecture theatre (n=233). They were asked to cast a closed, secret vote, for another person on the same row, by marking a ‘X’ on a seating plan. The vote carried either a positive or negative outcome for its recipient by gaining or removing lottery tickets. Results:- Participants that cast a negative vote demonstrated a significant ‘neighbour effect’ by avoiding voting for their nearest neighbours. However, the reverse pattern was found when participants gave a positive vote. Conclusion:- We suggest that the ‘neighbour effect’ is a robust and strong bias in decision-making.

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