Social Value Orientation, Expectations, and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas: A Meta–Analysis

Abstract

Interdependent situations are pervasive in human life. In these situations, it is essential to form expectations about the others' behaviour to adapt one's own behaviour to increase mutual outcomes and avoid exploitation. Social value orientation, which describes the dispositional weights individuals attach to their own and to another person's outcome, predicts these expectations of cooperation in social dilemmas—an interdependent situation involving a conflict of interests. Yet, scientific evidence is inconclusive about the exact differences in expectations between prosocials, individualists, and competitors. The present meta‐analytic results show that, relative to proselfs (individualists and competitors), prosocials expect more cooperation from others in social dilemmas, whereas individualists and competitors do not significantly differ in their expectations. The importance of these expectations in the decision process is further highlighted by the finding that they partially mediate the well‐established relation between social value orientation and cooperative behaviour in social dilemmas. In fact, even proselfs are more likely to cooperate when they expect their partner to cooperate. Copyright © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology

With or against Each Other? The Influence of a Virtual Agent’s (Non)cooperative Behavior on User’s Cooperation Behavior in the Prisoners’ Dilemma

“…While we observed a high initial willingness to cooperate, participants significantly cooperated less after the agent's noncooperative behavior in the second round of the game supporting our hypothesis. These findings are in line with prior research [9], demonstrating that persons are more cooperative when they expect their counterparts to cooperate as well. Thus, after the agent destroyed the participants' trust by being not cooperative, participants did not expect the agent to be cooperative anymore and therefore their own willingness to cooperate also decreases.…”

“…Besides the nonverbal behavior of interlocutors, their actual decision-making behavior in the Prisoner's Dilemma is of course also a crucial indicator for trust and cooperation. Pletzer and colleagues [9] found that people are more willing to cooperate when they expect their counterpart to cooperate. Hence, once the trust between the interlocutors has been destroyed by not being cooperative, the perceived cooperativeness of the counterpart will also decrease.…”

PREPRINT Inspired to lend a hand? Attempts to elicit prosocial behavior through goal contagion

“…As described above, we also collected data on the two variables expectation and human player, which we explored in a regression models with the other predictors. In line with previous research (Pletzer et al, 2018), expectation turned out to be a significant predictor, b = 0.027, t(155) = -1.104, p < .001., but human player was, as well, b = -0.082, t(155) = -2.094, p = .038. The latter showed a negative slope coefficient, indicating that the less participants believed that the other player was human, the more they behaved prosocially afterwards.…”

“…It has been demonstrated that the more prosocially oriented people are, the more time they spend on others' requests (McClintock & Allison, 1989), the more they donate money for charity (Van Lange et al, 2007), the more socially mindful they select preferable objects (Van Doesum, Van Lange, & Van Lange, 2013), the more often they interpret situations as a cooperative endeavor (Yamagishi et al, 2013), and the more they value moral behavior, including fairness, honesty and equality (Liebrand, Jansen, Rijken, & Suhre, 1986;Sattler & Kerr, 1991;Joireman et al, 2003). Prosocials and proselfs differ in their world views resulting in different expectations of others' behavior (see also generalized expectations in Pletzer et al, 2018;Bogaert, Boone & Declerck, 2008;Van Lange, 1992;Kelley & Stahelsky, 1970): Proselfs think that others would act in a selfish way when given the option to cooperate, whereas prosocials have a stronger initial expectation that others will cooperate in such situations.…”

Modalidades de interacción y valores sociales emergentes en niños

“…Las investigaciones centradas en el estudio de valores prosociales, desde diferentes perspectivas, han sido un tema de gran interés desde la década del setenta (Brownell & Carriger, 1990;Correa-Chávez, 2016;Kagan & Madsen, 1971;Matusov, Bell & Rogoff, 2002). Numerosas investigaciones se han centrado en la orientación del valor social (Social Value Orientationsvo), la cual intenta establecer las diferencias individuales entre sujetos cooperativos e individualistas con el uso de diferentes medidas asociadas (Pletzer, Balliet, Joireman, Kuhlman, Voelpel & Van Lange, 2018). La mayoría de estudios reportados intentan describir qué tanto un individuo o sociedad es individualista, cooperativa o competitiva (Pletzer et al 2018).…”