CEAS' Director, Claudia Sanhueza, has been awarded a Mini-COES research grant as Principal Investigator. CEAS' researcher, Jorge Atria, also is a part of the research team, formed by Vicente Espinoza (IDEA / USACH) and Paula Luengo (UC).

The research project, titled "Gender and prosocial behavior" seeks to use ELSOC Survey Data and Experimental Games to understund gender gaps in prosocial behavior.

¿What is prosocial behavior and why is it important to study it?

Prosocial behavior is defined as any voluntary behavior aimed at benefiting other people. Prosocial behavior is a key aspect of everyday life and its importance has been crecently understood as a fundamental aspect of social cohesion. This kind of attitudes can generate huge benefits in highly unequal societies like the Chilean (e.g. increasing the will to pay for public goods). However, we know very little on the factors that drive prosocial behavior.

¿Why are gender gaps relevant?

Common sense usually posits women as being more generous than men, altough the evidence is not robust enough to make that claim: results tend to change depending on the country and the sample. Asides from this, recent neuroscientific evidence has been recently produced in this regard: male and female brains may process prosocial and selfish behavior in different ways. For women, prosocial behavior sends a higher reward signal in their way, while males react better to selfish behavior.