Engineering human cooperation - Does involuntary neural activation increase public goods contributions?

In a laboratory experiment, we use a public goods game to examine the hypothesis that human subjects use an involuntary eye- detector mechanism for evaluating the level of privacy. Half of our subjects are watched by images of a robot presented on their computer screen. The robot - named Kismet and invented at MIT - is constructed from objects that are obviously not human with the exception of its eyes. In our experiment, Kismet produces a significant difference in behavior that is not consistent with existing economic models of preferences, either self- or other- regarding. Subjects who are watched by Kismet contribute 29% more to the public good than do subjects in the same setting without Kismet.