Are athletes more cooperative than nonathletes? A laboratory experiment

Former athletic employees receive a better wage when hired than other employees because recruiters associate positive values to athletic participation. Whereas athletes are considered as more cooperative than others, this assumption lacks empirical support. We implement a laboratory experiment in order to examine whether athletes (i.e., individuals engaged in intense athletic participation) exhibit more cooperative behaviours than nonathletes. We compare the cooperative behaviours of athletes and nonathletes in a single‐shot public good game using a variant of the strategy method. We find that athletes exhibit significantly more conditional cooperative behaviours than nonathletes but no significant differences in unconditional behaviours.