Literature on positive psychology has suggested that being around prosocial givers may have a positive psychological effect which drives one to become more pro-social. The aim of this research is, thus, to uncover whether prosocial behaviour is socially contagious beyond the effects of direct reciprocity and norm-conformation. This will be tested using an experiment: participants will be allocated to one of two teams and asked to play a series of dictator games. The interactions are then repeated with at least one of the three treatments assigned to them: the participant would know (1) the average giving rate for their team; (2) whether their partner is or is not in their team; (3) how much their current partner gave them in the previous round and how much they gave their partner.

The proportion of tokens the participant gives in a particular round will be regressed on the proportion of allocations the participant had received from their partner in an earlier round (X1), a dummy for knowing what their partner had given them earlier (X2), the average proportion other players in their teams give (X3), a dummy for knowing (X4), a categorical variable for whether the participant was told if their partner is in their team (X5), their stock of tokens (X6), an interaction term between X2 and X3 which controls for direct reciprocity, and an interaction term between X3, X4, and X5 which controls for the effect of social norms. The parameter we are most interested in is whether the coefficient on X3 is positive; if the average network giving rate has an influence on the amount the participant gives, above and beyond how wealthy the participant is, direct reciprocity, and social norms, which are controlled for, then we have evidence in favour of pro-social behaviour being contagious.