Prosocial by default: Setting prosocial defaults increases overall prosociality even when a fraction of people are unresponsive

Defaults are powerful: whereas wisely set defaults increase prosocial choices, poorly set defaults promote self-serving decisions. We propose a distracted-from-doing-good hypothesis: compared with distraction-free environments, distracting environments lead people to rely more on the default options, particularly self-serving ones. In a preregistered experiment, participants made repeated allocation decisions involving monetary trade-offs between personal gain and charity donations. We manipulated the default type (prosocial vs. self-serving), the presence (vs. absence) of distractions and measured individual differences in mind wandering and social value orientation. Results did not support the hypothesis but offered valuable insights: On average, participants were more likely than chance to accept prosocial defaults, and they accept more prosocial than self-serving defaults. We found evidence that some individuals use self-serving defaults to justify selfish decisions, particularly those with a prosocial orientation. Interestingly, the aggregate effects were driven by 60 percent of participants; the remaining 40 percent were uninfluenced by defaults, acting according to their social preferences. Individual differences in mind wandering—how easily one is distracted—further moderate the default effects. We discuss how the results inform our understanding of prosocial behaviors in combination with individual heterogeneity and how defaults are a good tool to promote overall prosociality.