Interactions between personality and institutions in cooperative behaviour in humans

Abstract

Laboratory attempts to identify relationships between personality and cooperative behaviour in humans have generated inconsistent results. This may partially stem from different practices in psychology and economics laboratories, with both hypothetical players and incentives typical only in the former. Another possible cause is insufficient consideration of the contexts within which social dilemmas occur. Real social dilemmas are often governed by institutions that change the payoff structure via rewards and punishments. However, such ‘strong situations’ will not necessarily suppress the effects of personality. On the contrary, they may affect some personalities differentially. Extraversion and neuroticism, reflecting variation in reward and punishment sensitivity, should predict modification of cooperative behaviour following changes to the payoff structure. We investigate interactions between personality and a punishment situation via two versions of a public goods game. We find that, even in a strong situation, personality matters and, moreover, it is related to strategic shifts in cooperation. Extraversion is associated with a shift from free-riding to cooperation in the presence of punishment, agreeableness is associated with initially higher contributions regardless of game, and, contrary to our predictions, neuroticism is associated with lower contributions regardless of game. Results should lead to new hypotheses that relate variation in biological functioning to individual differences in cooperative behaviour and that consider three-way interactions among personality, institutional context and sociocultural background.

Genes, psychological traits and civic engagement

“…While there are reasons to think that changing technologies may lower the costs of collective action, concerns over the rise of 'slacktivism' [70] suggest that we pay attention to the factors that affect when people are willing to take costly action. Most importantly, our results suggest that different personality traits underlie different forms of participation (see also [71]). By logical extension, different people are drawn into civic engagement depending on the properties of the action.…”

Life history strategy and human cooperation in economic games

“…Nevertheless, the consistent finding of no direct relation between LH strategy and cooperation may have broader implications for research on personality traits and cooperation. A case in point is that life history strategy has been shown to correlate with personality differences in agreeableness (e.g., Manson, 2015), which relates to cooperation across different economic games (Schroeder, Nettle, & McElreath, 2015;Zhao & Smillie, 2015). However, the empirical evidence on these relations is somewhat mixed.…”

Evaluating the role of personality trait information in social dilemmas

“…Openness to Experience is also related to increased responses in the reward-sensitive region of the brain when choosing cooperative actions in a social context (Morawetz et al 2014). Schroeder et al (2015) find that Extraversion is associated with less freeriding when individuals are subject to the institution of punishment. The authors also report that agreeableness is associated with more giving to the public good, while neuroticism is associated with less giving to the public good.…”