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Facing a dilemma: cooperative behavior and beauty

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  • Donja Darai
  • Silvia Grätz
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    Abstract

    This paper investigates the influence of physical attractiveness on cooperative be- havior. We survey data from 211 episodes of a television game show and combine it with independent facial attractiveness ratings of the show's contestants. The final of the show represents a simultaneous one-shot modified prisoner's dilemma. Our results show that facially attractive contestants provoke cooperative behavior from their counterparts, but attractive contestants themselves do not behave differently from unattractive ones. This preferential treatment or "beauty premium" rewards attractive contestants with substantially higher monetary gains of up to £2 153. This finding applies to both sexes. But, the attractiveness effect is limited to mixed-gender interactions. Contestants are only more cooperative when facing an attractive fellow player of the opposite sex. Attractiveness also has no effect in group-decisions made by the contestants prior to the prisoner's dilemma. Therefore people seem to show a preference to cooperate with someone towards whom they are personally attracted; and this preference reaches full effect when people lack other information on which to base their decision.

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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by Department of Economics - University of Zurich in its series ECON - Working Papers with number 082.

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    Date of creation: Jun 2012
    Date of revision: Dec 2012
    Handle: RePEc:zur:econwp:082

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    Related research

    Keywords: Beauty premium; cooperation; prisoner's dilemma;

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    1. John A. List, 2006. "Friend or Foe? A Natural Experiment of the Prisoner's Dilemma," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(3), pages 463-471, August.
    2. Rosenblat, Tanya, 2008. "The Beauty Premium: Physical Attractiveness and Gender in Dictator Games," Staff General Research Papers 13001, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    3. Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2001. "Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262232197.
    4. Berggren, Niclas & Jordahl, Henrik & Poutvaara, Panu, 2010. "The looks of a winner: Beauty and electoral success," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 8-15, February.
    5. Bradley J. Ruffle & Ze’ev Shtudiner, 2010. "Are Good-Looking People More Employable?," Working Papers 1006, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    6. Mobius, Markus & Rosenblat, Tanya, 2010. "Why Beauty Matters," Staff General Research Papers 32112, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    7. Edward C. Norton & Hua Wang & Chunrong Ai, 2004. "Computing interaction effects and standard errors in logit and probit models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 4(2), pages 154-167, June.
    8. Belot, Michèle & Bhaskar, V. & van de Ven, Jeroen, 2010. "Promises and cooperation: Evidence from a TV game show," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 396-405, March.
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    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. The beauty of cooperation
      by UDADISI in UDADISI on 2012-07-04 13:38:00

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