Coalition of the willing
Trust, Punishment, and Cooperation Across 18 Societies: A Meta-Analysis
Daniel Balliet & Paul Van Lange
Perspectives on Psychological Science, July 2013, Pages 363-379
Abstract:
Punishment promotes contributions to public goods, but recent evidence suggests that its effectiveness varies across societies. Prior theorizing suggests that cross-societal differences in trust play a key role in determining the effectiveness of punishment, as a form of social norm enforcement, to promote cooperation. One line of reasoning is that punishment promotes cooperation in low-trust societies, primarily because people in such societies expect their fellow members to contribute only if there are strong incentives to do so. Yet another line of reasoning is that high trust makes punishment work, presumably because in high-trust societies people may count on each other to make contributions to public goods and also enforce norm violations by punishing free riders. This poses a puzzle of punishment: Is punishment more effective in promoting cooperation in high- or low-trust societies? In the present article, we examine this puzzle of punishment in a quantitative review of 83 studies involving 7,361 participants across 18 societies that examine the impact of punishment on cooperation in a public goods dilemma. The findings provide a clear answer: Punishment more strongly promotes cooperation in societies with high trust rather than low trust.
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Once Bitten, Twice Shy: The Effect of a Past Refusal on Expectations of Future Compliance
Daniel Newark, Francis Flynn & Vanessa Bohns
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Four studies examined help-seekers' beliefs about how past refusals affect future compliance. In Study 1, help-seekers were more likely than potential helpers to believe that a previous refusal would lead a potential helper to deny a subsequent request of similar size. Study 2 replicated this effect and found that help-seekers underestimated the actual compliance rate of potential helpers who had previously refused to help. Studies 3 and 4 explain this asymmetry. Whereas potential helpers' willingness to comply with a subsequent request stems from the discomfort of rejecting others not once, but twice, help-seekers rely on dispositional attributions of helpfulness to estimate the likelihood of hearing "yes" from someone who has previously told them "no."
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Atomic bombs and the long-run effect on trust: Experiences in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Eiji Yamamura
Journal of Socio-Economics, October 2013, Pages 17-24
Abstract:
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan are the only cities in the world that have experienced an atomic bomb attack. This paper explores how this devastating experience affected victims' tendency to trust others. Individual-level data were used to examine the long-term influence of experiencing an atomic bomb on individuals' trust. After controlling for individual characteristics, I obtained the following key findings. Individuals who experienced the attack were more likely to trust others. Furthermore, estimation based on a subsample revealed that victims of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb were more likely to trust others than those born in other areas of Japan before World War II. This implies that experiencing an historically traumatic event in 1945 strongly influenced individuals' trust in others even at the beginning of the 21st century. It follows from this that the effect of this devastating experience was enduring and had a long-term influence on individuals' values.
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The Coevolution of Behavior and Normative Expectations: An Experiment
Christoph Engel & Michael Kurschilgen
American Law and Economics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper, we test the effect of normative expectations and legal framing on cooperation in an experimental public good game with and without sanctions. We show that cooperation increases substantially as normative expectations and behavioral patterns coevolve. In the absence of sanctions, legal framing does not have any additional beneficial effect in realigning individual action and social well-being. Yet, in the presence of sanctions, the legal frame is crucial for the effectiveness of sanctions. Law and sanctions seem to complement each other. Our results inform the legal debate on customary law.
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Sandy Jap et al.
Journal of Marketing Research, April 2013, Pages 216-227
Abstract:
In this research, the authors develop a theory addressing why people act opportunistically when the stakes (i.e., payoffs) are low. Transaction cost theory suggests that opportunistic behavior is more likely under high-stakes conditions. The authors identify rapport as an important moderator of this relationship. Through a series of three studies, they find that high-stakes opportunism appears to occur only when rapport is low. In contrast, when rapport is high, this relationship reverses, such that opportunism is actually more likely when the stakes are low than when they are high. The authors attribute these findings to differences in reasoning and find that when rapport is high and the stakes are low, people are better able to justify their actions by employing morally malleable reasoning. Thus, this research offers insights into an important form of opportunism that has been largely absent from transaction cost theory.
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Vanessa Mertins, Andrea Schote & Jobst Meyer
Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, June 2013, Pages 97-114
Abstract:
Laboratory experiments have documented substantial heterogeneity in social preferences, but little is known about the origins of such behavior. Previous research on public goods experiments suggests that individual-level demographic and psychological variables correlate with player types. However, the key question about biological sources of variation in these preferences remains open. The aim of this study is to uncover genetic variations that influence differences in cooperative behavior. For this reason, we identify types of players within a strategic public goods experiment. We explicitly test for an association between individual variance in strategy choice and the functional promoter-region repeat of the Monoamine Oxidase A gene (MAOA). Our experimental findings suggest a link between MAOA and the occurrence of free-riding in females. Females with MAOA-L are less likely to behave like weak free-riders than MAOA-H carriers, whereas among males, our results did not support a significant relation between genotype and player type. Furthermore, MAOA-L female carriers contribute more than MAOA-H subjects to the public good if they know that others contribute nothing, and they showed slightly lower scores on the Machiavellianism scale. This is the first piece of evidence that genotype might predict player type within a public goods setting. It contributes to our understanding of biological drivers of economic decision making and points to the need for further exploration.
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Gert-Jan Lelieveld et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
On the basis of a social-functional approach to emotion, scholars have argued that expressing disappointment in negotiations communicates weakness, which may evoke exploitation. Yet, it is also argued that communicating disappointment serves as a call for help, which may elicit generous offers. Our goal was to resolve this apparent inconsistency. We develop the argument that communicating disappointment elicits generous offers when it evokes guilt in the target, but elicits low offers when it does not. In 4 experiments using both verbal (Experiments 1-3) and nonverbal (Experiment 4) emotion manipulations, we demonstrate that the interpersonal effects of disappointment depend on (a) the opponent's group membership and (b) the type of negotiation. When the expresser was an outgroup member and in representative negotiations (i.e., when disappointment did not evoke guilt), the weakness that disappointment communicated elicited lower offers. When the expresser was an ingroup member and in individual negotiations (i.e., when disappointment did evoke guilt), the weakness that disappointment communicated elicited generous offers from participants. Thus, in contrast to the common belief that weakness is a liability in negotiations, expressing disappointment can be effective under particular circumstances. We discuss implications for theorizing about the social functions of emotions.
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T. Dávid-Barrett & R.I.M. Dunbar
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 22 August 2013
Abstract:
Sociality is primarily a coordination problem. However, the social (or communication) complexity hypothesis suggests that the kinds of information that can be acquired and processed may limit the size and/or complexity of social groups that a species can maintain. We use an agent-based model to test the hypothesis that the complexity of information processed influences the computational demands involved. We show that successive increases in the kinds of information processed allow organisms to break through the glass ceilings that otherwise limit the size of social groups: larger groups can only be achieved at the cost of more sophisticated kinds of information processing that are disadvantageous when optimal group size is small. These results simultaneously support both the social brain and the social complexity hypotheses.
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Group Identity and Leading-by-Example
Michalis Drouvelis & Daniele Nosenzo
Journal of Economic Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the interplay between leading-by-example and group identity in a three-person sequential voluntary contributions game experiment. A common identity between the leader and her two followers is beneficial for cooperation: average contributions are more than 30% higher than in a benchmark treatment where no identity was induced. In two further treatments we study the effects of heterogeneous identities. We find no effect on cooperation when only one of the followers shares the leader's identity, or when followers share a common identity that differs from that of the leader. We conclude that group identity is an effective but fragile instrument to promote cooperation.
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Nonlinear effects of group size on collective action and resource outcomes
Wu Yang et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2 July 2013, Pages 10916-10921
Abstract:
For decades, scholars have been trying to determine whether small or large groups are more likely to cooperate for collective action and successfully manage common-pool resources. Using data gathered from the Wolong Nature Reserve since 1995, we examined the effects of group size (i.e., number of households monitoring a single forest parcel) on both collective action (forest monitoring) and resource outcomes (changes in forest cover) while controlling for potential confounding factors. Our results demonstrate that group size has nonlinear effects on both collective action and resource outcomes, with intermediate group size contributing the most monitoring effort and leading to the biggest forest cover gain. We also show how opposing effects of group size directly and indirectly affect collective action and resource outcomes, leading to the overall nonlinear relationship. Our findings suggest why previous studies have observed differing and even contradictory group-size effects, and thus help guide further research and governance of the commons. The findings also suggest that it should be possible to improve collective action and resource outcomes by altering factors that lead to the nonlinear group-size effect, including punishing free riding, enhancing overall and within-group enforcement, improving social capital across groups and among group members, and allowing self-selection during the group formation process so members with good social relationships can form groups autonomously.
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Framing the Ultimatum Game: Gender differences and autonomic responses
Michela Sarlo et al.
International Journal of Psychology, May/June 2013, Pages 263-271
Abstract:
The present study aimed at investigating whether the way offers are framed in the Ultimatum Game (UG) affects behavioral and autonomic responses in men and women. The "I give you" and "I take" expressions were used as gain and loss frames, respectively. Skin conductance and heart rate were recorded as indices of autonomic activation in response to unfair, mid-value, and fair offers. Acceptance rates were higher in men than in women under the gain frame. Moreover, men showed higher acceptance rates under the gain than under the loss frame with mid-value offers, whereas women's choices were not affected by frame. On the physiological level, men produced differential autonomic response patterns during decision-making when offers were presented under gain and loss framing. The "I take" frame, by acting as a loss frame, elicited in men the characteristic defensive response pattern that is evoked by aversive stimulation, in which increases in skin conductance are coupled with increases in heart rate. On the other hand, the "I give you" frame, by acting as a gain frame, elicited in men increases in skin conductance associated with prevailing heart rate deceleratory responses, reflecting a state of enhanced attention and orienting. In contrast, women's autonomic reactivity was not affected by frame, consistent with behavioral results. Phasic changes in heart rate were crucial in revealing differential functional significance of skin conductance responses under different frames in men, thus questioning the assumption that this autonomic measure can be used as an index of negative emotional arousal in the UG.
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Menusch Khadjavi & Andreas Lange
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, August 2013, Pages 163-175
Abstract:
We report insights into the behavior of prisoners in dilemma situations that so famously carry their name. We compare female inmates and students in a simultaneous and a sequential Prisoner's Dilemma. In the simultaneous Prisoner's Dilemma, the cooperation rate among inmates exceeds the rate of cooperating students. Relative to the simultaneous dilemma, cooperation among first-movers in the sequential Prisoner's Dilemma increases for students, but not for inmates. Students and inmates behave identically as second movers. Hence, we find a similar and significant fraction of inmates and students to hold social preferences.
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Endogenous Group Formation via Unproductive Costs
Jason Aimone et al.
Review of Economic Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Sacrifice is widely believed to enhance cooperation in churches, communes, gangs, clans, military units, and many other groups. We find that sacrifice can also work in the lab, apart from special ideologies, identities, or interactions. Our subjects play a modified VCM game - one in which they can voluntarily join groups that provide reduced rates of return on private investment. This leads to both endogenous sorting (because free-riders tend to reject the reduced-rate option) and substitution (because reduced private productivity favors increased club involvement). Seemingly unproductive costs thus serve to screen out free riders, attract conditional cooperators, boost club production, and increase member welfare. The sacrifice mechanism is simple and particularly useful where monitoring difficulties impede punishment, exclusion, fees, and other more standard solutions.
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Do Social Connections Create Trust? An Examination Using New Longitudinal Data
Jennifer Glanville, Matthew Andersson & Pamela Paxton
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
The origins of generalized trust remain unclear despite its importance to social, political, and economic functioning. Social capital theory and previous cross-sectional research suggest that informal social ties may be a source of trust. Using the 2006-2008 General Social Survey panel, we assess the relationship between changes in informal social ties and changes in trust. As the first US longitudinal analysis to address this question, our fixed-effects analysis is not biased by time-invariant factors, such as personality, or other sources of unobserved heterogeneity. We further control for changes in religious attendance, television viewing, family structure, health status, and educational attainment. Our fixed-effects results, as well as results from an auxiliary cross-lagged analysis, yield support for the proposition that informal social ties enhance trust.
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Jürgen Fleiß & Ulrike Leopold-Wildburger
Systems Research and Behavioral Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The reliability of human behavior in situations where cooperation is beneficial for all but is hindered by individual incentives not to cooperate is a central research question in economics and the social sciences. Little is known about how the interaction results of a subject with one partner may affect this subject's behavior when subsequently matched with a new partner. We extend this knowledge by studying the development of cooperation in a repeated prisoner's dilemma experiment. After several rounds, each subject is matched with a new partner. We analyse whether the interaction outcomes with the first partner lead subjects to change their behavior when they interact with the second partner. We focus on niceness as introduced by Axelrod and find statistically significant effects. Mutual cooperation with the first partner is positively correlated with the continuation of a nice strategy, whereas mutual defection leads subjects to give up their nice strategy.
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Powering up with indirect reciprocity in a large-scale field experiment
Erez Yoeli et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 18 June 2013, Pages 10424-10429
Abstract:
A defining aspect of human cooperation is the use of sophisticated indirect reciprocity. We observe others, talk about others, and act accordingly. We help those who help others, and we cooperate expecting that others will cooperate in return. Indirect reciprocity is based on reputation, which spreads by communication. A crucial aspect of indirect reciprocity is observability: reputation effects can support cooperation as long as peoples' actions can be observed by others. In evolutionary models of indirect reciprocity, natural selection favors cooperation when observability is sufficiently high. Complimenting this theoretical work are experiments where observability promotes cooperation among small groups playing games in the laboratory. Until now, however, there has been little evidence of observability's power to promote large-scale cooperation in real world settings. Here we provide such evidence using a field study involving 2413 subjects. We collaborated with a utility company to study participation in a program designed to prevent blackouts. We show that observability triples participation in this public goods game. The effect is over four times larger than offering a $25 monetary incentive, the company's previous policy. Furthermore, as predicted by indirect reciprocity, we provide evidence that reputational concerns are driving our observability effect. In sum, we show how indirect reciprocity can be harnessed to increase cooperation in a relevant, real-world public goods game.
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Aaron Elkins & Douglas Derrick
Group Decision and Negotiation, September 2013, Pages 897-913
Abstract:
Trust is a critical component in effective collaboration, decision-making and negotiation. The goal of effective team leaders should be to send signals and messages that increase trust. We attempt to determine if signals can vary perceptions of trustworthiness and if nonverbal behaviors, such as the voice, contain indicators of trust. In order to investigate the relationship between trust and vocal dynamics, this article presents a study that explores how the voice, measured unobtrusively, reflects a person's current level of perceived trust. We used an Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) to maximize consistency and control in questioning, timing, and interviewer nonverbal behavior, thus eliminating potential confounds that may be introduced due to interaction adaptation. Participants ( N=88 ) completed a face-to-face interview with the ECA and reported their perceptions of the ECA's trustworthiness. The results of the study revealed that vocal pitch was inversely related to perceived trust, but temporally variant; vocal pitch early in the interview reflected trust. The ECA was perceived as more trustworthy when smiling. While the results of this research suggest a relationship between vocal pitch and perceived levels of trust, more work needs to be done to clarify the causal relationship. Similarly, additional study needs to be done in order to integrate additional behavioral measurements that account for variation across diverse situations, people, and cultures.