@kaptain5 said in Professional Politicians skew towards altrusism? [study to read]:
In this study an interesting finding was that on average politicians we behaving altruistically (giving more to the other party than they would receive). On average over all sampled politicians were giving 49% of the prize to political opponents and giving 57% to in-group members. Compared to most other studies of the ultimatum game this is far above most people and very far above the rational expectation. The result is also remarkably consistent between countries. When the out-group and in-group results are combined this gives the result that the politicians surveyed are slightly altruistic in the game.
This one surprised me, I expected the politicians surveyed to be much more greedy.
I haven't properly read the paper but this bit is interesting, and I've been considering whether we should be surprised or not. Politicians certainly have a reputation for being greedy and corruptible. But a lot of people who go into politics probably do so for the right reasons - that they actually want to make things better for people and remove unfairness etc.
I think there is more corruption at the top, but this isn't most politicians. Plus I also think that higher-up politicians might still have some good principles, but these conflict with other things that get in the way of that - wanting to get in with the right people, make the right deals etc. So removed from politics, they still might make fair decisions. They just happen to be morally weak in certain ways.
