Altruism and the role of affect: an investigation into the causal effects of positive emotions and its rationality on altruism
type: CreativeWork
description: There is now well established evidence that shows that growing up in poor neighbourhoods can keep people locked in poverty. One response to neighbourhood distress – i.e., situations in which neighbourhoods serves as poverty traps – is to move people out of such situations. Experiments conducted in the United States of America (for example, the Moving to Opportunity experiment) provides a compelling case for this approach. However, when the scale of neighbourhood distress reaches a majority of the population, as is does in South Africa, where the legacy of Apartheid spatial inequality persists, alternative approaches are necessary. One such alternative is to seek to better understand the behavioural mechanisms at work that tilt communities toward the low level equilibria characterising a poverty trap and to target those behaviours that can aggregate to produce neighbourhood distress. Behaviour modification programmes attempt to do this, for example, by targeting the underlying drivers of crime, violence, risky sexual behaviour and fatalism that characterises so many marginalised communities in South Africa. This dissertation uses data from a rare lab-in-the-field experiment to investigate one important mechanism of behaviour modification: the impact of emotions on pro-social preferences. The results show that positive emotions causes an increase in individual altruism and do not imply irrationality according to standard axiomatic frameworks in economics. This contrasts with the view of earlier investigators that emotions are disruptive in decision making. This dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapter one focuses on a general introduction of endogenous preferences, the link between emotions, pro-social preferences and decision making. In chapter two I discuss the novel behaviour modification experiment that this dissertation is based on: the Activate! Change Driver's programme (hereafter, simply referred to as Activate!), an empowerment programme aimed at y…
abstract: There is now well established evidence that shows that growing up in poor neighbourhoods can keep people locked in poverty. One response to neighbourhood distress – i.e., situations in which neighbourhoods serves as poverty traps – is to move people out of such situations. Experiments conducted in the United States of America (for example, the Moving to Opportunity experiment) provides a compelling case for this approach. However, when the scale of neighbourhood distress reaches a majority of the population, as is does in South Africa, where the legacy of Apartheid spatial inequality persists, alternative approaches are necessary. One such alternative is to seek to better understand the behavioural mechanisms at work that tilt communities toward the low level equilibria characterising a poverty trap and to target those behaviours that can aggregate to produce neighbourhood distress. Behaviour modification programmes attempt to do this, for example, by targeting the underlying drivers of crime, violence, risky sexual behaviour and fatalism that characterises so many marginalised communities in South Africa. This dissertation uses data from a rare lab-in-the-field experiment to investigate one important mechanism of behaviour modification: the impact of emotions on pro-social preferences. The results show that positive emotions causes an increase in individual altruism and do not imply irrationality according to standard axiomatic frameworks in economics. This contrasts with the view of earlier investigators that emotions are disruptive in decision making. This dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapter one focuses on a general introduction of endogenous preferences, the link between emotions, pro-social preferences and decision making. In chapter two I discuss the novel behaviour modification experiment that this dissertation is based on: the Activate! Change Driver's programme (hereafter, simply referred to as Activate!), an empowerment programme aimed at y…
author: Kinyanjui, George Kariuki
keywords: Economics
date published: 2021
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:41Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: School of Economics

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/33813