Boundaries of reciprocity: Incompleteness of information undermines cooperation

Past research has revealed that people have a strong tendency to respond to others' cooperative behavior with cooperation and to others' noncooperative behavior with noncooperation. Yet it is unclear whether or not this tendency still holds when people have only incomplete information abou...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Acta psychologica 2012-09, Vol.141 (1), p.67-72
Main Authors: Vuolevi, Joel H.K., Van Lange, Paul A.M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
Cooperation
Cooperative Behavior
Fairness
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Helping Behavior
Humans
Incomplete information
Interpersonal Relations
Male
Middle Aged
Models, Psychological
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reciprocity
Self-interest
Social dilemma
Social interactions. Communication. Group processes
Social Perception
Social psychology
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Summary:Past research has revealed that people have a strong tendency to respond to others' cooperative behavior with cooperation and to others' noncooperative behavior with noncooperation. Yet it is unclear whether or not this tendency still holds when people have only incomplete information about their interaction partner's past behavior. To address this question, we designed a new paradigm – a coin allocation paradigm – in which participants were provided with incomplete information about another person's degree of cooperative behavior (i.e., coin allocations to the participant). Consistent with our hypotheses, two experiments revealed that incompleteness of information undermines both expectations about another person's cooperation as well as one's own cooperation. Moreover, complementary analyses indicated that the detrimental effects of incompleteness of information on cooperation were mediated by expectations of other's cooperation. We suggest that a relatively strong belief in self-interest serves to fill in the blanks when information is incomplete, which undermines expectations of other's cooperation as well as one's own cooperative behavior. ► Incomplete information about the interaction partner's previous behavior ► Incompleteness of information undermines expected and actual cooperation. ► People cooperate as much as they think that their partner cooperated.
ISSN:0001-6918
1873-6297
DOI:10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.07.004