CROSSROADS—Promoting Cooperation: Insights and Challenges

This piece distills lessons for increasing the impact of social science research based on our work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Applied Cooperation Initiative, which facilitates collaborations between social scientists and practitioners to promote real-world prosocial behaviors. We describe an iterative model of collaboration—intervention, randomized trial, publication, and press—that has sustained a robust research pipeline, broadening the dissemination and application of findings. We highlight two promising directions for future research in organizational contexts: (i) adapting interventions to intraorganizational dynamics, in which norms and incentives differ from public settings, and (ii) developing strategies for establishing or reforming counterproductive norms that may hinder organizational performance. We conclude with recommendations for supporting translational research: introducing article types dedicated to translation, removing barriers to publishing practitioner-relevant review articles, streamlining institutional review board and legal processes, and funding cross-institutional collaborations.