IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mpg/wpaper/2023_01.html

The Importance of Reciprocity: Investigating Individual Differences Underlying Conditional Cooperation

Author

Listed:
  • Léon Bartosch

    (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn)

  • Dorothee Mischkowski

    (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn)

Abstract

Several models of social preferences have been developed at the intersection of social psychology and behavioral economics, such as social value orientation (SVO) and conditional cooperation. Whereas SVO is well researched in its dispositional and situational correlates, we aim to locate conditional cooperation within the HEXACO personality model, particularly expecting a relation to reactive vs. active prosociality (i.e., Agreeableness vs. Honesty-Humility). Contrary to our expectations, however, in two preregistered, incentivized studies (n total = 521) conditional cooperation was neither related to Agreeableness nor to Honesty-Humility. When investigating the relation between SVO and conditional cooperation, we conceptually replicate a positive relation between both (pro-)social preferences. Surprisingly, while prosocials coincide with conditional cooperators, even most individualists who maximize their outcome in unilateral giving turn to conditionally cooperative behavior in strategic interactions. This underlines the importance of shaping situations as reciprocal acts to elicit cooperative behavior from originally self-interested individuals.

Suggested Citation

  • Léon Bartosch & Dorothee Mischkowski, 2023. "The Importance of Reciprocity: Investigating Individual Differences Underlying Conditional Cooperation," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics 2023_01, Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2023_01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2023_01online.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ryan O. Murphy & Kurt A. Ackerman & Michel J. J. Handgraaf, 2011. "Measuring social value orientation," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 6(8), pages 771-781, December.
    2. Thöni, Christian & Volk, Stefan, 2018. "Conditional cooperation: Review and refinement," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 37-40.
    3. Volk, Stefan & Thöni, Christian & Ruigrok, Winfried, 2012. "Temporal stability and psychological foundations of cooperation preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 664-676.
    4. Murphy, Ryan O. & Ackermann, Kurt A. & Handgraaf, Michel J. J., 2011. "Measuring Social Value Orientation," Judgment and Decision Making, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(8), pages 771-781, December.
    5. Kurt A. Ackermann & Ryan O. Murphy, 2019. "Explaining Cooperative Behavior in Public Goods Games: How Preferences and Beliefs Affect Contribution Levels," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-34, March.
    6. Fischbacher, Urs & Gächter, Simon & Quercia, Simone, 2012. "The behavioral validity of the strategy method in public good experiments," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 897-913.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bilancini, Ennio & Boncinelli, Leonardo & Celadin, Tatiana, 2022. "Social value orientation and conditional cooperation in the online one-shot public goods game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 243-272.
    2. Carlos A. de Matos Fernandes & Dieko M. Bakker & Jacob Dijkstra, 2022. "Assessing the test-retest reliability of the social value orientation slider measure," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 17(1), pages 31-49, January.
    3. Susann Fiedler & Dshamilja Marie Hellmann & Angela Rachael Dorrough & Andreas Glöckner, 2018. "Cross-national in-group favoritism in prosocial behavior: Evidence from Latin and North America," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 13(1), pages 42-60, January.
    4. Masiliūnas, Aidas & Nax, Heinrich H., 2020. "Framing and repeated competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 604-619.
    5. Gächter, Simon & Renner, Elke, 2018. "Leaders as role models and ‘belief managers’ in social dilemmas," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 321-334.
    6. Kölle, Felix & Quercia, Simone, 2021. "The influence of empirical and normative expectations on cooperation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 691-703.
    7. Furtner, Nadja C. & Kocher, Martin G. & Martinsson, Peter & Matzat, Dominik & Wollbrant, Conny, 2021. "Gender and cooperative preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 39-48.
    8. Weber, Till O. & Schulz, Jonathan F. & Beranek, Benjamin & Lambarraa-Lehnhardt, Fatima & Gächter, Simon, 2023. "The behavioral mechanisms of voluntary cooperation across culturally diverse societies: Evidence from the US, the UK, Morocco, and Turkey," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 134-152.
    9. Baader, Malte & Gächter, Simon & Lee, Kyeongtae & Sefton, Martin, 2022. "Social Preferences and the Variability of Conditional Cooperation," IZA Discussion Papers 15523, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Jürgen Fleiß & Kurt A. Ackermann & Eva Fleiß & Ryan O. Murphy & Alfred Posch, 2020. "Social and environmental preferences: measuring how people make tradeoffs among themselves, others, and collective goods," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 28(3), pages 1049-1067, September.
    11. Snijder, Luuk L. & Stallen, Mirre & Gross, Jörg, 2024. "Decision-makers self-servingly navigate the equality-efficiency trade-off of free partner choice in social dilemmas among unequals," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    12. Hubert János Kiss & Alfonso Rosa-Garcia & Vita Zhukova, 2023. "Group contest in a coopetitive setup: experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 18(3), pages 463-490, July.
    13. Gächter, Simon & Kölle, Felix & Quercia, Simone, 2022. "Preferences and perceptions in Provision and Maintenance public goods," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 338-355.
    14. van Winden, Frans, 2023. "The informational affective tie mechanism: on the role of uncertainty, context, and attention in caring," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    15. Zakaria Babutsidze & Nobuyuki Hanaki & Adam Zylbersztejn, 2019. "Digital Communication and Swift Trust," Post-Print halshs-02409314, HAL.
    16. Judith Kas & David J. Hardisty & Michel J. J. Handgraaf, 2021. "Steady steps versus sudden shifts: Cooperation in (a)symmetric linear and step-level social dilemmas," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 16(1), pages 142-164, January.
    17. Maxime Perodaud & Michela Chessa, 2026. "Hey, what did you expect ? Confirmation bias in credence goods markets: Theoretical and experimental analyses," Post-Print hal-05441370, HAL.
    18. Christoph Engel & Paul A. M. Van Lange, 2021. "Social mindfulness is normative when costs are low, but rapidly declines with increases in costs," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 16(2), pages 290-322, March.
    19. Quement, Mark T. Le & Marcin, Isabel, 2020. "Communication and voting in heterogeneous committees: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 449-468.
    20. Masters-Waage, Theodore C. & Nai, Jared & Reb, Jochen & Sim, Samantha & Narayanan, Jayanth & Tan, Noriko, 2021. "Going far together by being here now: Mindfulness increases cooperation in negotiations," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 189-205.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:mpg:wpaper:2023_01. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Marc Martin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mppggde.html .

    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.