Do you share your personally useless information if others may benefit from it?

Abstract

Information is personally useless if its beholder cannot individually benefit from it further unless she shares it with those who can exploit that information to increase their mutual outcome. We study sharing such information anonymously in a non-strategic and non-competitive setting, where selfish and cooperative motives align. Although sharing information was cost-free and resulted in expected mutual payoff, almost all subjects showed some levels of hesitancy toward sharing information, and it was more severe in the introverts. According to our mechanistic model, this irrationality could arise because of the excessive subjective value of personally useless information and low other-regarding motives, that necessitated over-attainable personal benefit to drive sharing. Interestingly, other-regarding element correlated with the subjects’ belief about how others are cooperative in general. In addition, sensitivity to the value of information correlated with their extraversion level. The results open a new window towards understanding inefficient motives that deprive people of collective benefit.