Differentiating busking from begging: A psychological approach.

Despite the research support that street performance is generally a beneficial element to public space, the legitimacy of street performance remains controversial. One critical issue is that busking is often confused with begging. With a psychological perspective, the present research examines the distinction of busking from begging. Two studies approached the problem from the viewpoints of street performers and passersby, respectively. Study 1 (N = 188) surveyed street performers on their reasons for street performance and reasons for why donations to street performance should be acceptable. The respondents could articulate various features of street performance along which busking could be similar to and yet distinguishable from begging. Study 2 (N = 189) experimentally compared busking and begging in how they could affect people's perception of public space. Relative to public space with begging, public space with busking was perceived as significantly more comforting, more active, less prone to crimes, and overall more likeable. These descriptive (Study 1) and experimental (Study 2) findings help to clarify the difference between busking and begging: Street performance is not merely an act of soliciting donations in public space, but it also possesses artistic and entertaining qualities that can in turn make public space more favorable. The current findings can inform the policy making and regulations of street performance. Moreover, since the present research was conducted in Hong Kong, it contributes a cultural perspective to the literature on street performance.

Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe.

Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one's location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exist, we examined if and how social mindfulness differs across countries. At little to no material cost, social mindfulness typically entails small acts of attention or kindness. Even though fairly common, such low-cost cooperation has received little empirical attention. Measuring social mindfulness across 31 samples from industrialized countries and regions (n = 8,354), we found considerable variation. Among selected country-level variables, greater social mindfulness was most strongly associated with countries' better general performance on environmental protection. Together, our findings contribute to the literature on prosociality by targeting the kind of everyday cooperation that is more focused on communicating benevolence than on providing material benefits.

Effect of Street Performance (Busking) on the Environmental Perception of Public Space.

This is the first experimental study testing the effect of street performance (aka busking) on the subjective environmental perception of public space. It is generally believed that street performance can enhance people's experience of public space, but studies advocating such a view have not used a control group to explicitly verify the effect of street performance. In response to this methodological limitation, we conducted two studies using experimental design. Study 1 (N = 748) was an online computer-based study where research participants evaluated the extent to which the presence vs. absence of street performance could change their perception of public space. Study 2 (N = 162) was a between-group quasi-experiment in an actual public space where people physically present in the space evaluated the perception of the space with vs. without street performance. Overall, we found converging results that street performance could make public space more visitable, more restorative, and more preferable. The current findings not only fill in a gap in the literature on street performance, but they also inform the policy making and regulations of street performance.

Scale Development for Environmental Perception of Public Space.

We developed a psychometric scale for measuring the subjective environmental perception of public spaces. In the scale development process, we started with an initial pool of 85 items identified from the literature that were related to environmental perception. A total of 1,650 participants rated these items on animated images of 12 public spaces through an online survey. Using principal component analyses and confirmatory factor analyses, we identified two affective factors (comfort and activity) with 8 items and six cognitive factors (legibility, enclosure, complexity, crime potential, wildlife, and lighting) with 22 items. These eight factors represent the core attributes underlying environmental perception of public spaces. Practicality of the scale and limitations of the study are also discussed.

The effect of subgroup homogeneity of efficacy on contribution in public good dilemmas.

This paper examines how to maximize contribution in public good dilemmas by arranging people into homogeneous or heterogeneous subgroups. Past studies on the effect of homogeneity of efficacy have exclusively manipulated group composition in their experimental designs, which might have imposed a limit on ecological validity because group membership may not be easily changed in reality. In this study, we maintained the same group composition but varied the subgroup composition. We developed a public good dilemmas paradigm in which participants were assigned to one of the four conditions (high- vs. low-efficacy; homogeneous vs. heterogeneous subgroup) to produce their endowments and then to decide how much to contribute. We found that individuals in homogeneous and heterogeneous subgroups produced a similar amount and proportion of contribution, which was due to the two mediating effects that counteracted each other, namely (a) perceived efficacy relative to subgroup and (b) expectation of contribution of other subgroup members. This paper demonstrates both the pros and cons of arranging people into homogeneous and heterogeneous subgroups of efficacy.

Expectation and cooperation in prisoner's dilemmas: The moderating role of game riskiness.

This paper investigated the effect of risk orientation, game riskiness, and expectation of cooperation on cooperation in one-shot prisoner's dilemmas (PD). Participants in pairs played PD games that varied on game riskiness such that for half of the games cooperation was more risky than defection (more risky games) while for another half cooperation was less risky (less risky games). They estimated how likely it was that the other player was going to cooperate (expectation of cooperation) before they made their cooperation/defection decision on each game. Supporting the Goal/Expectation Hypothesis, we replicated the effect that expectation of cooperation enhanced cooperation. We also found that risk-seeking individuals cooperated more in more risky games whereas risk-averse individuals cooperated more in less risky games. More importantly, we found that game riskiness moderated the effect of expectation of cooperation on cooperation. The positive effect of expectation of cooperation on cooperation was stronger for more risky games than for less risky games. Our results illustrated how the relation between expectation and cooperation as stipulated by the Goal/Expectation Hypothesis was moderated by riskiness of the situations.

Cooperativeness and competitiveness as two distinct constructs: validating the Cooperative and Competitive Personality Scale in a social dilemma context.

The present research validated the construct and criterion validities of the Cooperative and Competitive Personality Scale (CCPS) in a social dilemma context. The results from three studies supported the notion that cooperativeness and competitiveness are two independent dimensions, challenging the traditional view that they are two ends of a single continuum. First, confirmatory factor analyses revealed that a two-factor structure fit the data significantly better than a one-factor structure. Moreover, cooperativeness and competitiveness were either not significantly correlated (Studies 1 and 3) or only moderately positively correlated (Study 2). Second, cooperativeness and competitiveness were differentially associated with Schwartz's Personal Values. These results further supported the idea that cooperativeness and competitiveness are two distinct constructs. Specifically, the individuals who were highly cooperative emphasized self-transcendent values (i.e., universalism and benevolence) more, whereas the individuals who were highly competitive emphasized self-enhancement values (i.e., power and achievement) more. Finally, the CCPS, which adheres to the trait perspective of personality, was found to be a useful supplement to more prevalent social motive measures (i.e., social value orientation) in predicting cooperative behaviors. Specifically, in Study 2, when social value orientation was controlled for, the CCPS significantly predicted cooperative behaviors in a public goods dilemma (individuals who score higher on cooperativeness scale contributed more to the public goods). In Study 3, when social value orientation was controlled for, the CCPS significantly predicted cooperative behaviors in commons dilemmas (individuals who score higher on cooperativeness scale requested fewer resources from the common resource pool). The practical implications of the CCPS in conflict resolution, as well as in recruitment and selection settings, are discussed.

The jury and abjury of my peers: the self in face and dignity cultures.

The self is defined and judged differently by people from face and dignity cultures (in this case, Hong Kong and the United States, respectively). Across 3 experiments, people from a face culture absorbed the judgments of other people into their private self-definitions. Particularly important for people from a face culture are public representations--knowledge that is shared and known to be shared about someone. In contrast, people from a dignity culture try to preserve the sovereign self by not letting others define them. In the 3 experiments, dignity culture participants showed a studied indifference to the judgments of their peers, ignoring peers' assessments--whether those assessments were public or private, were positive or negative, or were made by qualified peers or unqualified peers. Ways that the self is "knotted" up with social judgments and cultural imperatives are discussed.

Efficacy = endowment x efficiency: revisiting efficacy and endowment effects in a public goods dilemma.

This article reexamines the efficacy and endowment effects in public good (PG) dilemma by conceptualizing that efficacy = endowment x efficiency. Endowment is the resource that a person can contribute. Efficiency is the impact of a unit of endowment. Efficacy is the total impact of contribution. The authors used a group project scenario to simulate a continuous contribution PG dilemma. The 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 experimental design manipulated own efficiency and own endowment as within-subject variables and the other persons' efficiency and endowment as between-subject variables. Results indicate that cooperation was mainly affected by one's endowment and others' efficiency. The authors distinguished among 3 types of efficiency effects: (a) an own-absolute-efficiency effect that efficient people put in more effort regardless of others' efficiency, (b) an other-absolute-inefficiency effect that people put in more effort when others are inefficient, and (c) a relative-inefficiency effect that inefficient people put in less effort in the presence of efficient people. Contrasting previous robust findings on efficiency, they identified a situation in which efficiency has no effects--when one has more endowment than do others.

Bonus and Penalty in Common Pool Resource Dilemmas under Uncertainty.

Common pool resource (CPR) dilemmas constitute a class of social dilemmas in which equilibrium behavior results in Pareto deficient outcomes that are not at all desirable by the group. We focus on a class of CPR dilemmas that, in addition to strategic uncertainty about the harvesting behavior of the other group members, include environmental uncertainty about the size of the CPR. In an attempt to decrease the rate of requests from the common pool, and thereby increase individual payoffs, we extend previous research-both theoretically and experimentally-in two different directions. In the bonus treatment, a reward is given to the agent(s) who requests the least, and in the penalty treatment, a charge is imposed on the agent(s) who requests the most. We show that under equilibrium play the bonus treatment decreases total group request, whereas the penalty treatment increases it. Our experimental results do not support this prediction. Rather, both treatments considerably decrease the rate of request and, therefore, increase the rate of provision. The penalty treatment is shown to be more effective in reducing individual requests and enhancing provision rates than the bonus treatment. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.