Looks like the makings of a good main post, to me. (Haven’t read it all yet)
Five experiments demonstrate that people pay forward behavior
in the sorts of fleeting, anonymous situations that increasingly
typify people’s day-to-day interactions. These data reveal that—in
contrast to the focus of media, laypeople, and prior research—true
generosity is paid forward less than both greed and equality.
Equality leads to equality and greed leads to greed, but true
generosity results only in a return to equality—an asymmetry
driven by the greater power of negative affect.
Gray, Ward, and Norton, “Paying It Forward: Generalized Reciprocity and the Limits of Generosity ”, is a recent study using chained dictator games: each participant is left some amount by the previous (fictitious) player, and chooses how much to leave to the next (also fictitious) player.
Looks like the makings of a good main post, to me. (Haven’t read it all yet)