IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joepsy/v114y2026ics0167487026000255.html

Validating a survey measure of conditional cooperation

Author

Listed:
  • Fallucchi, Francesco
  • Marietta Leina, Andrea
  • Quercia, Simone

Abstract

We study the ability of survey-based measures to predict conditional cooperation in an incentivized Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game. We assess whether (i) hypothetical game play, (ii) unincentivized social norms, (iii) survey measures of economic preferences, and (iv) personality traits predict conditionally cooperative behavior when monetary stakes are introduced. Our findings reveal that hypothetical PD responses are the strongest predictors of incentivized behavior, with limited evidence of hypothetical bias. Notably, patience is negatively correlated with conditional cooperation, contrary to expectations. Surprisingly, other economic and social preference measures, including reciprocity and normative evaluations, exhibit weak or no predictive power. These results contribute to the debate on the feasibility of survey-based proxies in behavioral research. They suggest that well-designed hypothetical games can reliably substitute incentivized experiments, but that deviations from accurately mirroring the task may weaken the predictive power of survey measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Fallucchi, Francesco & Marietta Leina, Andrea & Quercia, Simone, 2026. "Validating a survey measure of conditional cooperation," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:114:y:2026:i:c:s0167487026000255
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2026.102901
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487026000255
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joep.2026.102901?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:114:y:2026:i:c:s0167487026000255. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.