People make more rational economic decisions on behalf of strangers and distant relatives than they do for close family members or themselves, new psychology research has shown.
The study, published in the online journal PLOS ONE, is the first to show that decisions taken on behalf of others are affected systematically by the closeness of the relationship as measured on a family tree.
The experiment was carried out by Dr Fenja Ziegler from the School of Psychology at the University of Lincoln and Dr Richard Tunney from the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham.
Read it here on the Uni news.
http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/news/2012/11/603.asp
Link to the article is here:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0049479