Social dilemmas: When self-control benefits cooperation

Martinsson, Peter; Myrseth, Kristian Ove R.; Wollbrant, Conny

doi:10.1016/j.joep.2014.09.004

Cited by 54 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 85 publications

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“…Experimental evidence as well as theoretical considerations also suggest that both of these attributes could drive behavior in PGGs. Martinsson et al (2014) demonstrate that subjects with higher self-control cooperate more. Similarly Fehr and Leibbrandt (2011) show how patience assessed by a lab measure predicts cooperative behavior in the field.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Smart or Selfish - When Smart Guys Finish Nice

Lohse

2014

SSRN Journal

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In three different variants of an one-shot public good game I analyze the relationship between cooperation and cognitive abilities, assessed through the cognitive reflection test (CRT). In a between-subjects design, the baseline case is contrasted with two treatment conditions that allow to control for two potentially moderating factors: By employing a test for the presence of confusion, the first condition scrutinizes whether higher cognitive abilities are correlated with cooperation proper or simply grant a better understanding of the incentive structure. The second condition explores the proposition that the link between cognitive abilities and cooperation could depend on the complexity of the decision situation. To exogenously create a cognitively more demanding choice setting, subjects had to decide under time pressure. I find a strong and positive relationship between CRT-scores and cooperation, that is not driven by confusion. Time pressure has a strongly moderating effect on this relationship.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Smart or Selfish - When Smart Guys Finish Nice

Lohse

2014

SSRN Journal

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“…Next to procedural differences, the social choice designs used in these studies differed in the degree of familiarity, or social closeness, between the participants and their interaction partners. For example, in some studies, the interaction partner was anonymous, whereas in others, he/she was introduced to the participants, and yet in other studies, the interaction partners were actual acquaintances or co-students [18]. Interestingly, whether the interaction partner was anonymous or not appeared to determine the sign of the cognitive load effects on generosity: when the interaction partner was an anonymous stranger, subjects often became more generous under cognitive load conditions [9,11], but when the interaction partner was familiar to the subject, e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Interestingly, whether the interaction partner was anonymous or not appeared to determine the sign of the cognitive load effects on generosity: when the interaction partner was an anonymous stranger, subjects often became more generous under cognitive load conditions [9,11], but when the interaction partner was familiar to the subject, e.g. the interaction partner was a co-student or introduced before, he/she became more selfish [16,18]. When familiarity was not well controlled, any putative effects of cognitive load on social preferences might have been obscured by the uncontrolled variability in anonymity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This hypothesis blends in with recent theories on prosociality and cognitive control. These theories suggest that prosocial behavior requires self-control to resolve the conflict between selfish and other-regarding motives [2,12,18,19]. Because evidence suggests that self-control capacities become exhausted with increasing cognitive load ([20–22], but see [23]), putting strain on the cognitive control system is therefore likely to change social-distance-dependent generosity profiles.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gender-Specific Effects of Cognitive Load on Social Discounting

et al. 2016

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We live busy, social lives, and meeting the challenges of our complex environments puts strain on our cognitive systems. However, cognitive resources are limited. It is unclear how cognitive load affects social decision making. Previous findings on the effects of cognitive load on other-regarding preferences have been ambiguous, allowing no coherent opinion whether cognitive load increases, decreases or does not affect prosocial considerations. Here, we suggest that social distance between individuals modulates whether generosity towards a recipient increases or decreases under cognitive load conditions. Participants played a financial social discounting task with several recipients at variable social distance levels. In this task, they could choose between generous alternatives, yielding medium financial rewards for the participant and recipient at variable social distances, or between a selfish alternative, yielding larger rewards for the participant alone. We show that the social discount function of male participants was significantly flattened under high cognitive load conditions, suggesting they distinguished less between socially close and socially distant recipients. Unexpectedly, the cognitive-load effect on social discounting was gender-specific: while social discounting was strongly dependent on cognitive load in men, women were nearly unaffected by cognitive load manipulations. We suggest that cognitive load leads men, but not women to simplify the decision problem by neglecting the social distance information. We consider our study a good starting point for further experiments exploring the role of gender in prosocial choice.

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“…It is this joint resultego depletion affects pro-social behavior without affecting pro-social concerns-that represents the key contribution of their paper. We expand on the significance of their results by relating the pattern to recent theorizing about pro-social behavior and the two-stage model of self-control, which distinguishes between identifying self-control conflict and exercising restraint (Martinsson, Myrseth, & Wollbrant, 2012;Kocher, Martinsson, Myrseth, & Wollbrant, 2013;Martinsson, Myrseth, & Wollbrant, 2014).…”

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confidence: 96%

Depletion Influences Restraint, But Does It Influence Conflict Identification? Expanding on Osgood and Muraven (2015)

Myrseth

Wollbrant

2015

Basic and Applied Social Psychology

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Osgood and Muraven (2015) show that cognitive depletion reduces pro-social behaviors, but not pro-social attitudes. We expand on the authors' interpretation by relating their results to recent theorizing on the relationship between pro-social behavior and self-control. This framework distinguishes between the proclivity to identify self-control conflict and the capacity to exercise restraint. Osgood and Muraven's (2015) findings can be interpreted as evidence that cognitive depletion in social contexts fails to influence a necessary condition for identifying self-control conflict. However, the results do not yet allow us to conclude that depletion influences capacity to exercise restraint. Further work is needed to understand the mechanisms by which cognitive depletion influences pro-social behavior.

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Social dilemmas: When self-control benefits cooperation

Cited by 54 publications

References 85 publications

Smart or Selfish - When Smart Guys Finish Nice

Smart or Selfish - When Smart Guys Finish Nice

Gender-Specific Effects of Cognitive Load on Social Discounting

Depletion Influences Restraint, But Does It Influence Conflict Identification? Expanding on Osgood and Muraven (2015)

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