The choice of a strategy in a context of uncertainty such as the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game can be influenced by many factors. There is limited evidence about how these factors affect the cooperative choices when the player receives different types of feedback in terms of pay-off. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of peace attitudes and personality factors in cooperation choices. Forty-nine adults filled out the Peace Attitude Scale and the Big Five Questionnaire and were submitted to five versions of the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game (tit for tat, cooperate, unforgiving, random, and defect). The results showed that participants with high levels of peace attitude and friendliness cooperated more than participants with low levels of peace attitude and friendliness in tit for tat and cooperate settings, but changed strategy in the unforgiving, random, and defect settings. Public Significance StatementThis study expands previous literature on the study of peace attitudes and suggests how peace attitudes can influence cooperative decision-making choices in situations of uncertainty. More specifically, this study suggests that cooperative choices, in which two or more individuals work together toward the attainment of a mutual goal, are the consequence of two types of factors: Habitual response patterns (peace attitude, friendliness, and cooperation personality traits) and contextual factors (iterated Prisoner's Dilemma settings).

The present study examined the performance on five phases of critical thinking in gifted and nongifted children in two settings: ethical and neutral. Ninety-one children, 32 gifted (8–10 years old), 32 normally developing children matched for chronological age (8–10 years old) and 27 normally developing children matched for mental age (12–13 years old) completed critical thinking tasks. The findings confirmed that intellectually gifted children had higher critical thinking capacity than typically developing children. The results reveal that the basic factor determining best performances in critical thinking is mental age and not chronological age. However, critical thinking ability was the same in ethical and neutral settings. Analysis of the phases of critical thinking show that the first and the third phase, clarification and evaluation, specifically differentiates gifted from nongifted children. These phases refer to the ability to understand the type of problem rapidly and to assess the credibility of statements and to assess the logical strength of the actual or intended inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions or other forms of representation.

Human society and its development are based on the principle of cooperation. The choice of a cooperative strategy in a context of uncertainty, such as the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game, can be influenced by many factors, both individual and situational. However, there is limited evidence regarding how these factors affect strategic choices when players are subjected to cognitive load conditions. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of situational factors, such as cognitive load, and two individual factors, namely peace attitude and personality, on strategic decision-making. Fifty-six adults participated in the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game under two conditions that differed in cognitive load: in the first condition, they had to make decisions about the Prisoner’s Dilemma task with working memory load, while in the second condition, they had to make decisions about the same task without working memory load. Additionally, participants completed the Peace Attitude Scale and the Italian 10-Item Big Five Inventory. The results indicated that both individual and situational factors influenced strategic choices. Specifically, cognitive load increased the cooperative strategy in the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Furthermore, individual factors influenced strategic choices only in the condition with cognitive load: people with higher levels of peace attitude and conscientiousness tended to be more cooperative than those with lower peace attitude.

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