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Recent research has highlighted the role of prosocial personality traits—agreeableness and honesty-humility—in egalitarian distributions of wealth in the dictator game. Expanding on these findings, we ran two studies to examine individual differences in two other forms of prosociality—generosity and reciprocity—with respect to two major models of personality, the Big Five and the HEXACO. Participants (combined
One of the major themes in the literature on economic games is that humans care about and are motivated by the interests of others. These other-regarding or social preferences are the building blocks of prosocial behavior and have been incorporated into various economic models (e.g.,
One potential source of this heterogeneity rests in broad dispositions capturing consistent and enduring patterns in behavior and experience. Specifically,
In the current paper, we extend this nascent literature by applying a framework of distinct prosocial traits to a broader range of social preferences beyond egalitarianism. We first present an overview of the prosocial domains of major personality models and discuss their relevance for distributive and reciprocal preferences in economic games. Building on the design of the traditional dictator game, we develop a novel paradigm that simultaneously tests for two other forms of social preference beyond egalitarianism: generosity and reciprocity.
Prosociality is a general term referring to a variety of positive emotions, attitudes, and behaviors directed toward others, which may be manifested through acts of sharing, helping, and cooperating (
The Five-Factor Model or “Big Five” is a robust hierarchical taxonomy of personality dimensions recovered from a number of measures of trait descriptors (
Within the Big Five model, agreeableness captures tendencies toward altruism and cooperation, and has a core underlying motivation of maintaining interpersonal harmony (
However, Big Five agreeableness is a broad domain of personality which can be divided into two distinct aspects:
A major alternative to the Big Five is the HEXACO model, a six-factor model of personality developed from psycholexical studies in European and Asian languages (
Together, HEXACO honesty-humility and HEXACO agreeableness span the prosocial domain typically captured by Big Five agreeableness and make up two forms of individual variation in reciprocal altruism. Honesty-Humility represents
In summary, the Big Five and HEXACO models provide an array of distinct prosocial traits which reflect different motivations and mechanisms, and which show divergent validity with respect to interpersonal and socio-political variables (see
Prosocial domains of the Big Five and HEXACO models of personality.
Personality dimension | Defining characteristic | Known roles in relevant games |
---|---|---|
Agreeableness | Broad tendencies toward altruism and cooperation | Fair allocations of wealth Amount returned in trust game Acceptance in ultimatum game |
Politeness | Tendency to adhere to social norms; alignment with the group | Fair allocations of wealth |
Compassion | Tendency to be emotionally concerned about others; alignment with another individual | |
Honesty-Humility | Tendency to cooperate despite opportunities for exploitation; active cooperation | Fair allocations of wealth Amount returned in trust game |
Agreeableness | Tendency to cooperate despite the misgivings of others; reactive cooperation | Acceptance in ultimatum game |
One basic way in which social preferences deviate from narrow self-interest is the desire for equality. Egalitarianism is a basic motivation that can be traced back to small-scale societies in human evolutionary history (
For example, Big Five agreeableness is a consistent predictor of egalitarian dictator allocations (for a review, see
Despite the wealth of findings it has generated, the dictator game is limited when drawing inferences about a wider array of social preferences. Notably, the constant-sum structure of the game means that decisions to benefit one’s partner are always at a cost to self-interest by the same magnitude. However, many instances of real-world prosociality involve decisions which benefit others at minimal personal cost, such as giving pre-loved belongings to charity and posthumous organ donation (
Acts of generosity are typically obscured by dominant norms of equality in constant-sum games, such as the dictator game, where fewer than 5% of individuals allocate more than half the endowment to their partner (
In adults, costless prosociality has been incorporated into modified dictator games consisting of simple allocation tasks, such as selecting an efficient but personally disadvantageous (400,750) choice over an egalitarian (400,400) one (
In addition to distributive preferences that govern egalitarianism and generosity, another major influence deeply embedded within social interactions are reciprocal preferences (
Individual differences in the tendency to reciprocate are well documented (
Within the Big Five model, self-reported positive reciprocity is positively correlated with agreeableness and conscientiousness, while negative reciprocity is negatively correlated with the same two traits, and positively with neuroticism (
Furthermore, the HEXACO model and its partitioning of the prosocial domain into active (i.e., honesty-humility) and reactive (i.e., agreeableness) forms of reciprocal altruism is ideally suited to the finer-grained analysis of positive and negative reciprocity in economic games. HEXACO agreeableness has been negatively associated with self-reported negative reciprocity (
Social preferences represent a number of channels through which humans deviate from narrow self-interest and engage in prosocial behaviors. Distributive preferences capture concerns for egalitarianism and generosity, while preferences for reciprocity promote favorable or unfavorable treatment conditional on the previous acts or intentions of others. Emerging research has demonstrated considerable heterogeneity in these preferences, which may be partially underpinned by prosocial personality traits. However, most of this research has focused on the trade-off between self- and other-regarding interests in the dictator game. Detailed relations between prosocial personality traits and other forms of social preferences are less well understood, and inferences are often cobbled together from a mixture of different games and personality measures. As a result, it is difficult to disentangle trait effects from the influence of contextual factors across variable game environments (given that traits too are contextualized;
The aims of the current research were threefold: (1) To identify a richer set of social preferences beyond egalitarianism and inequality aversion, (2) to examine the source of individual differences in these preferences using theoretical models of distinct prosocial traits, and in doing so, (3) address some of the major limitations of the existing literature (e.g., fragmented games and traits).
We developed a novel paradigm using six simple modifications of the dictator game to test multiple social preferences. This design was inspired by
The benefit of this design is that it provided a suite of tightly controlled and manipulable conditions ideal for localizing specific prosocial constructs. For example, comparing costly vs. costless game decisions allowed us to identify different patterns of behavior after controlling for the influence of self-interest. Similarly, reciprocal tendencies can be teased apart from overall altruistic motivations. Existing studies suggest that Big Five agreeableness and HEXACO honesty-humility are associated positively with positive reciprocity and negatively with negative reciprocity, but these preferences have been largely considered in isolation. Given that these traits are already associated with greater dictator allocations, the current design will reveal whether they produce an
We then examined the sources of heterogeneity within this paradigm with respect to the theoretically relevant prosocial domain of personality: agreeableness and its aspects of politeness and compassion within the Big Five model, and honesty-humility and agreeableness within the HEXACO model. In particular, we focused on the discriminant validity between similar prosocial personality constructs and identified unique trait effects to help shed light on the specific mechanisms and motivations taking place within economic games (for a recent example, see
In line with previous research, we expected politeness from the Big Five model to be uniquely associated with costly prosocial allocations (i.e., dictator games) but expected compassion to play a relatively stronger role in costless prosocial allocations (i.e., generosity games), where allocations are less norm-driven and capture motivations of improving the wellbeing of others. Within the HEXACO model, we predicted that honesty-humility would have a unique role in both costly and costless prosociality, given its core characteristic of benevolence. Furthermore, we hypothesized that HEXACO agreeableness—which captures tendencies toward forgiveness and non-retaliation—would be negatively associated with negative reciprocity. Finally, in light of the evidence demonstrating the role of Big Five agreeableness and HEXACO honesty-humility in
This study was approved by the Human Ethics Advisory Group of the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne. All participants provided informed consent via an electronic survey according to the established guidelines of the Group.
The final sample consisted of 304 North American participants (aged 18–65 years,
Participants completed the 100-item BFAS, a measure of the five broad domains of personality (neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness/intellect) and their lower-level aspects. Of particular interest was the prosocial domain of agreeableness, including its aspects of politeness (e.g., “insult people”) and compassion (e.g., “inquire about others’ wellbeing”). These were each measured with 10 items on a five-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). The BFAS is a well-validated measure of the Big Five and has good internal consistency and test–retest reliability (
Participants also completed the 100-item HEXACO-PI-R, an alternative measure of personality comprising six broad trait domains. Of particular interest were the prosocial domains of honesty-humility (e.g., “I am an ordinary person who is no better than others”) and agreeableness (e.g., “I rarely hold a grudge, even against people who have badly wronged me”). Each trait is measured with 16 items on a five-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree), and has good internal consistency (
Participants completed demographic questions, personality measures, and economic games on a survey programmed using Qualtrics Survey Software and administered through the MTurk requester interface. The BFAS and the HEXACO-PI-R were presented one after the other in a randomized order. The survey consisted of additional questionnaires and economic games beyond the scope of the current research, including a hypothetical real-world economic decision-making task. The 200 items of the personality questionnaires served as a filler task between this and the current games of interest, and thus were expected to prevent any carryover effects.
All economic games were hypothetical, that is, participants were asked to imagine that they were playing the games with an anonymous partner who was described as another participant that they would not knowingly meet. To check the validity of responses, participants also completed two attention checks embedded in the personality measures (e.g., “Please select Strongly Agree”). Thirty-six (11%) participants were excluded for failing at least one of these attention checks. Participants were paid US$2.00 and the median time spent on the study was 30 min.
Participants played six economic games that were loosely based on a larger set of dictator and response games developed by
The six games were set up using a 2 (game type: dictator vs. generosity) × 3 (reciprocity: baseline, help, and hurt) repeated measures design, depicted in
In the three generosity games (based on
In addition, there were three types of reciprocity conditions: baseline, help, and hurt. In the two baseline games, participants were asked to indicate their preferred selection with no information provided about their partner. In the four remaining games, participants were provided information about their partner’s previous move, which involved passing on a decision that either helped or hurt the participant. In the two help games, participants read that their partner had passed on a decision with a payoff of $0 to the participant, opting instead to defer to the participant to choose from the list of current options. In the two hurt games, participants read that their partner had passed on a decision with a payoff of $15 (dictator version) or $10 (generosity version) to the participant, opting instead to defer to the participant. In other words, the partner’s move in the help condition prevented the participant from going away empty-handed, while their move in the hurt condition resulted in the participant missing out on $15 (dictator version) or $10 (generosity version). These different forgone payoffs between the dictator and generosity games correspond to the maximum amounts that could be earned in each of these games ($10 in the dictator game, $5 in the generosity game).
To summarize, this experimental setup would thus reveal an effect for generosity if there were greater allocations in the generosity games relative to the dictator game (i.e., a main effect for game type). In addition, reciprocity would be evident from varying allocations of wealth between the baseline, help, and hurt games (i.e., a main effect of reciprocity), in which higher allocations in the help games would be indicative of positive reciprocity and lower allocations in the hurt games indicative of negative reciprocity.
Mean allocations to a partner in each of the six economic bargaining games are presented in the left panel of
Age and gender are important demographic variables frequently associated with social preferences (
Allocations by gender and game type are presented in the left panel of
Bivariate correlations between prosocial personality traits are shown in
Correlations between prosocial personality traits.
Study 1: Hypothetical |
Study 2: Incentivized |
||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
(1) | B5 Agreeableness | 0.86 | 0.91 | ||||||||
(2) | B5 Politeness | 0.84∗∗ | 0.74 | 0.85∗∗ | 0.82 | ||||||
(3) | B5 Compassion | 0.84∗∗ | 0.44∗∗ | 0.88 | 0.90∗∗ | 0.56∗∗ | 0.92 | ||||
(4) | HEX Honesty-Humility | 0.44∗∗ | 0.51∗∗ | 0.24∗∗ | 0.82 | 0.41∗∗ | 0.48∗∗ | 0.27∗∗ | 0.87 | ||
(5) | HEX Agreeableness | 0.22∗∗ | 0.26∗∗ | 0.14∗ | 0.19∗∗ | 0.84 | 0.53∗∗ | 0.52∗∗ | 0.42∗∗ | 0.31∗∗ | 0.88 |
Bivariate correlations between game allocations and prosocial personality traits are shown in
Correlations between prosocial personality traits and game allocations.
Study 1: Hypothetical |
Study 2: Incentivized |
|||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
DG | DG0 | DG15 | GG | GG0 | GG10 | DG | DG0 | DG15 | GG | GG0 | GG10 | |
Agreeableness | 0.20∗∗ | 0.17∗∗ | 0.16∗∗ | 0.02 | 0.05 | 0.01 | 0.19∗∗ | 0.11 | 0.18∗∗ | -0.01 | 0.0003 | -0.07 |
Politeness | 0.17∗∗ | 0.16∗∗ | 0.15∗∗ | 0.02 | 0.07 | -0.01 | 0.17∗∗ | 0.12 | 0.15∗ | 0.07 | 0.07 | 0.04 |
Compassion | 0.19∗∗ | 0.16∗∗ | 0.13∗ | 0.05 | 0.05 | 0.05 | 0.17∗∗ | 0.07 | 0.17∗∗ | -0.09 | -0.07 | -0.14∗ |
Honesty-Humility | 0.20∗∗ | 0.12∗ | 0.26∗∗ | -0.06 | -0.04 | -0.01 | 0.30∗∗ | 0.21∗∗ | 0.31∗∗ | -0.04 | -0.02 | -0.08 |
Agreeableness | 0.10 | 0.03 | -0.01 | 0.17∗∗ | 0.18∗∗ | 0.15∗∗ | 0.07 | -0.02 | 0.02 | 0.04 | 0.004 | -0.02 |
A series of 2 (game type) × 3 (reciprocity) repeated measures ANCOVAs was performed for each personality model with the relevant prosocial traits standardized and entered simultaneously as covariates. Interactions between prosocial personality traits and game type or reciprocity are presented in
ANCOVA results for interactions between prosocial traits and game type.
Study 1: Hypothetical |
Study 2: Incentivized | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Interaction term | df | ηp2 | df | ηp2 | ||||
Game × B5A | 1, 302 | 0.84 | 0.36 | 0.003 | 1, 254 | 2.24 | 0.14 | 0.01 |
Game × B5Pol | 1, 301 | 0.30 | 0.58 | 0.001 | 1, 253 | 1.97 | 0.16 | 0.01 |
Game × B5Comp | 1, 301 | 0.18 | 0.67 | 0.001 | 1, 253 | 7.70 | 0.01 | 0.03 |
Game × HEXH | 1, 301 | 12.84 | <0.001 | 0.04 | 1, 253 | 11.48 | 0.001 | 0.04 |
Game × HEXA | 1, 301 | 9.62 | 0.002 | 0.03 | 1, 253 | 2.62 | 0.11 | 0.01 |
ANCOVA results for interactions between prosocial traits and reciprocity.
Study 1: Hypothetical |
Study 2: Incentivized | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Interaction term | df | ηp2 | df | ηp2 | ||||
Reciprocity × B5A | 1.83, 551.89 | 0.04 | 0.95 | <0.001 | 1.89, 478.90 | 0.19 | 0.82 | 0.001 |
Reciprocity × B5Pol | 1.83, 550.24 | 0.22 | 0.78 | 0.001 | 1.89, 477.05 | 0.18 | 0.83 | 0.001 |
Reciprocity × B5Comp | 1.83, 550.24 | 0.20 | 0.80 | 0.001 | 1.89, 477.05 | 0.002 | 0.99 | <0.001 |
Reciprocity × HEXH | 1.84, 553.30 | 4.42 | 0.02 | 0.01 | 1.89, 478.16 | 0.17 | 0.84 | 0.001 |
Reciprocity × HEXA | 1.84, 553.30 | 0.78 | 0.45 | 0.003 | 1.89, 478.16 | 1.87 | 0.16 | 0.01 |
Within the Big Five model, there was a main effect for agreeableness,
Within the HEXACO model, there was a main effect for agreeableness,
To follow up on these interactions, we examined the effect of these two traits for dictator and generosity games separately, which revealed a “double dissociation” between the two, depicted in the left panel of
In addition, there was a significant interaction between honesty-humility and reciprocity,
The results of Study 1 showed clear evidence of social preferences beyond inequality aversion and egalitarianism. Individuals allocated significantly more wealth to their partners when decisions were costless than when they were costly, demonstrating tendencies toward generosity. In addition, there was evidence of positive reciprocity, with individuals allocating more wealth to their partner after their partner had assisted them. However, we found no evidence of negative reciprocity, and individuals did not allocate any differently when they had been denied a higher payoff by a hurtful partner. These findings were further moderated by gender, with men allocating more than women in the generosity games and when their partner had not previously hurt them.
The results presented a mixed picture of predicted and unexpected findings regarding the role of personality, revealing a main effect for politeness (but not so much compassion) in the Big Five model. In the HEXACO model, honesty-humility predicted greater allocations in the dictator game, in keeping with a large body of previous research (
An important consideration in Study 1 is that the decisions were hypothetical, featuring imagined partners and stakes. Previous studies have been conflicted as to whether hypothetical paradigms produce comparable results to incentivized games, especially when trait effects are involved (
This study was approved by the Human Ethics Advisory Group of the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne. All participants provided informed consent via an electronic survey according to the established guidelines of the Group.
The final sample consisted of 256 North American participants (aged 19–67 years,
Participants completed the 100-item BFAS (
Participants completed the same demographic questions, personality measures, and economic games as Study 1, which were again programmed using Qualtrics Survey Software and administered through the MTurk requester interface. This time, however, the BFAS was presented before the HEXACO-PI-R and the two were separated by several other questionnaires (e.g., Major Life Goals,
Unlike Study 1, participants’ responses to all games were financially incentivized. This was done by informing participants that their decisions for one of the games (which was pre-selected) would be matched to another participant and used to determine their payment at the end of the session. This approach is similar to the Conditional Information Lottery, which is a standard procedure in the literature (
Participants completed the same two attention checks as in Study 1. Ten participants (3.8%) were excluded for failing at least one of these checks. The show-up fee was US$8.00, in addition to bonus payments earned from study tasks (US$0.50). The median time spent on the study was 42 min.
Mean allocations to a partner are presented in the right panel of
A 2 (game type: dictator vs. generosity) × 3 (reciprocity: baseline, help, and hurt) repeated measures ANOVA was performed with Greenhouse-Geisser corrections for sphericity violations of reciprocity, χ2(2) = 16.00,
Again, age was not significantly correlated with any game decisions. There was an interaction between gender and game type when gender was included in the 2 (game type) × 3 (reciprocity) repeated measures ANOVA,
Bivariate correlations between prosocial personality traits are shown in
Bivariate correlations between game allocations and prosocial personality traits are shown in
A series of 2 (game type) × 3 (reciprocity) repeated measures ANCOVAs was again performed for each personality model with the relevant traits standardized and entered simultaneously as covariates (see
Within the Big Five model, there was again a main effect for agreeableness,
Within the HEXACO model, there was a main effect for honesty-humility,
The above analyses were repeated and the findings were largely the same when gender was included as an additional term (see Supplementary Tables
The incentivized results of Study 2 replicated many of the main findings from the hypothetical paradigm of Study 1. Again, there was clear evidence of inequality aversion, generosity, and positive reciprocity, which were moderated by gender. When we examined the role of prosocial personality traits, honesty-humility once more interacted with game type, predicting greater allocations in dictator—but not generosity—games. In the Big Five model, we again observed a main effect of politeness—but not compassion—which was globally and uniquely associated with greater allocations across all games.
However, the results of Study 2 also introduced two non-trivial differences compared with Study 1. First, the previous interaction between agreeableness and game type in the HEXACO model disappeared in the incentivized paradigm. In fact, HEXACO agreeableness was not associated with allocations of any kind. Second, a novel and unpredicted interaction with game type emerged for compassion in the Big Five model, in which it was not related to dictator allocations, but predicted lower allocations in the generosity game, once politeness was controlled for. This combination of consistent and less consistent findings across the two studies demonstrates the importance of replication and comparisons across incentivized and hypothetical paradigms.
Prosociality is a complex, multidimensional construct, yet previous research on personality and social preferences has largely focused on simple games and broad trait domains. Expanding on this literature, we developed a novel behavioral paradigm (inspired by
The sizes for these effects are consistent with those previously observed for the role of personality in economic games, where the sample-size weighted average correlation with dictator allocations was
In line with a large body of literature, our two studies showed that humans are responsive to additional social preferences that stray from both narrow self-interest and inequality aversion. The findings from the generosity game correspond to previous research showing that many individuals are willing to assist others even when it means being
In contrast, we found mixed results for reciprocity, with consistent evidence of positive—but not negative—reciprocity across both studies. This supports the idea that negative and positive reciprocity are indeed independent processes and are not driven by the same motivations (
Other factors may also contribute to the lack of negative reciprocity in our data. First, all decisions in the games were gain-framed. Even when a partner “hurt” a participant, it simply prevented them from receiving a higher amount rather than incurring a personal loss, which may have been too weak to provoke negative reciprocity. Second, the initial payoff combination (15 for the participant, 10 for the partner) declined by the partner in the hurt conditions of the dictator game was already unequal, which may have convinced participants that their partner’s decision to pass on this offer was justified and not deserving of retaliation. Third, the assessment of different social preferences within a single paradigm may trigger a desire among participants to behave consistently, thus artificially increasing consistency in behavior and nullifying any effects for negative reciprocity. However, the differential patterns of responding across generosity and positive reciprocity conditions provide evidence against any such response set. Future investigations using loss-framed manipulations, different configurations of payoffs, and measurements separated by time may be more appropriate for investigating negative reciprocity.
One interesting finding to emerge across both studies was the interaction between gender and game type, with men consistently allocating more than women in the (costless) generosity games. In the (costly) dictator game, however, women allocated more than men in incentivized games while there were no gender differences in hypothetical responses. But given that decisions in the latter are already a costless form of prosociality—relying on words rather than actions—the absence of a gender gap here may reflect overestimates of allocations among men relative to women. Hence, while women were more inequality averse, they were not necessarily more altruistic when this involved promoting the welfare of others over and above their own.
Although these results were unpredicted and unrelated to the aims of this research, they provide a clear replication of previous research on gender and social preferences. Several studies have shown that women are more prosocial in simple dictator games, while men are more prosocial when the price of giving drops and when giving or cooperating maximizes efficiency (
These findings correspond to a wider literature on gender differences in preferences toward social and political inequality (i.e., social dominance orientation), which are largely stable across nations and cultures (
A prominent finding was that the politeness aspect of Big Five agreeableness consistently predicted greater overall allocations in both studies. Although we observed a trend for a main effect of compassion when decisions were hypothetical, this disappeared altogether in the incentivized paradigm. These results are in keeping with previous research demonstrating that politeness—rather than compassion—drives egalitarian allocations in the dictator game, with the divergence between the two clearest in incentivized rather than hypothetical paradigms (
This unique effect of politeness suggests that prosociality in these decontextualized and neutrally framed paradigms is a function of the tendency to respect others and to adhere to social norms rather than emotional concern for others’ wellbeing. While compassion plays a fundamental role in real-world forms of prosociality (
A second major finding to appear consistently across studies was the interaction between honesty-humility and game type, where it predicted greater allocations in the dictator game but played no role in the generosity game. Honesty-Humility has been consistently linked to fair and prosocial (or at least the absence of antisocial) behaviors when there are personal profits to be made, such as delinquency (e.g., stealing money;
On the one hand, this implies that there are limits on the prosociality encompassed by honesty-humility, and, contrary to previous evidence (
It is noteworthy that these findings for honesty-humility were accompanied by a complementary pattern of results for HEXACO agreeableness in the hypothetical games. While HEXACO agreeableness did not predict dictator allocations, consistent with previous research (
Interestingly, however, we observed a near-identical interaction for the volatility aspect of Big Five neuroticism in the incentivized paradigm, which captures related constructs (i.e., anger and irritability;
The dual studies and their near-identical designs provide a useful comparison of trait effects across incentivized and hypothetical designs, which has been a topic of debate among psychologists and economists (
There have been recent calls for an integrated research agenda between personality psychology and economics (
Conception and design: LS and KZ. Collection, analysis, and interpretation of data: EF, LS, and KZ. Drafting the article: KZ. Revising the article: EF, LS, and KZ.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at:
In addition, an interstitial scale, altruism, represents a blend of HEXACO honesty-humility, agreeableness, and emotionality (e.g., “I have sympathy for people who are less fortunate than I am”;
While our generosity game was inspired by that designed by
A future extension is to examine these distinct prosocial traits at an even finer level of analysis, as honesty-humility too can be broken down into four facets: sincerity, greed avoidance, fairness, and modesty (
We thank one of our reviewers for this observation.