Ever wonder if acts of kindness or malice really do ripple outwards? If you give up a seat on a train to a stranger, do they go onto "pay it forward" to others? Likewise, if you steal someone's seat, does the bad mood you engender topple over to other people like a set of malicious dominoes? We'd all probably assume that the answers to both questions were yes, but James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis think they have found experimental evidence for the contagious nature of cooperation and cheating.
The duo analysed data from an earlier psychological experiment by Ernst Fehr and Simon Gachter, where groups of four volunteers had to decide how much money to put in a public pot. For every unit they chipped in, each member would get 0.4 back. So any donations represent a loss to the donor, but a gain to the group as a whole. The best way for the group to benefit would be for everyone to put in all their money, but each individual player could do even better by putting in nothing and feeding off their peers' generosity.
This "public goods game" went on for six rounds. At the end of each one, the players were told what their other comrades did, although everyone's identities were kept secret. The groups were shuffled between rounds so that players never played with each other more than once.
