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Publications
  • August 2, 2016
  • Article
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Uncalculating Cooperation Is Used to Signal Trustworthiness

By: Jillian J. Jordan, Moshe Hoffman, Martin A. Nowak and David G. Rand
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Abstract

Humans frequently cooperate without carefully weighing the costs and benefits. As a result, people may wind up cooperating when it is not worthwhile to do so. Why risk making costly mistakes? Here, we present experimental evidence that reputation concerns provide an answer: people cooperate in an uncalculating way to signal their trustworthiness to observers. We present two economic game experiments in which uncalculating versus calculating decision-making is operationalized by either a subject’s choice of whether to reveal the precise costs of cooperating (Exp. 1) or the time a subject spends considering these costs (Exp. 2). In both experiments, we find that participants are more likely to engage in uncalculating cooperation when their decision-making process is observable to others. Furthermore, we confirm that people who engage in uncalculating cooperation are perceived as, and actually are, more trustworthy than people who cooperate in a calculating way. Taken together, these data provide the first empirical evidence, to our knowledge, that uncalculating cooperation is used to signal trustworthiness, and is not merely an efficient decision-making strategy that reduces cognitive costs. Our results thus help to explain a range of puzzling behaviors, such as extreme altruism, the use of ethical principles, and romantic love.

Keywords

Social Evaluation; Experimental Economics; Moral Psychology; Cooperation; Reputation; Decision Making

Citation

Jordan, Jillian J., Moshe Hoffman, Martin A. Nowak, and David G. Rand. "Uncalculating Cooperation Is Used to Signal Trustworthiness." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 31 (August 2, 2016): 8658–8663.
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About The Author

Jillian J. Jordan

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
→More Publications

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More from the Authors
  • Punitive but Discerning: Reputation Can Fuel Ambiguously-Deserved Punishment, but Does Not Erode Sensitivity to Nuance By: Jillian J. Jordan and Nour S. Kteily
  • Negotiating a Legacy at Sustainable Harvest By: Jillian J. Jordan, Julian Zlatev and Anoushka Kiyawat
  • Negotiating with Data: Analytics FC By: Jillian Jordan, Livia Alfonsi and Anoushka Kiyawat
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