Two projects about cooperation
Wed 15.04 10:30 - 11:30
- Behavioral and Management Sciences Seminar
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Bloomfield 152
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Zoom: https://technion.zoom.us/j/91305736101
- Corrupt Collaboration Around the Globe Humans are an especially cooperativespecies. We are also remarkably honest, even when tempted to lie to secure personal profit. A recent body of work demonstrates that when honesty and cooperation are at odds honesty often gives way to corrupt collaboration, suggesting that honesty and collaboration are tradeable moral currencies. In 20 countries (N≅11,500) we explored how the balance between individual (dis)honesty, collaborative (dis)honesty, and individual cooperativeness depends on the cultural setting, connecting to a growing body of research demonstrating significant cultural variation in ethical thinking and behavior. At the individual level, the tendency to engage in corrupt collaboration is positively related to individual dishonesty and negatively to individual cooperativeness. This result suggests that although a successful, mutually beneficial relationship with a partner, which is based on joint dishonesty, clearly requires cooperation, a cooperative disposition, which is related to a more general tendency toward moral behavior, seems to hinder such joint, corrupt enterprises. At the country level, the main result is that the tendency to switch from being honest when acting alone to being dishonest in collaboration with others is positively related to the Prevalence of Rule Violations in the country (PRV; a measure of political fraud, tax evasion and corruption). Our results are the first to demonstrate how individual and collaborative dishonesty co-vary across societies. Policies aimed at curbing dishonesty should take this variation into account.
- Intragroup cooperation in intergroup conflict: the role of perceptions One of the most recurrent hypotheses in the intergroup conflict literature is the “conflict-cohesion hypothesis”, which states that intergroup conflict increases intragroup cohesion and cooperation. Among the most robust experimental tests of the conflict-cohesion hypothesis are those based on experimental team games, which allow to examine the effect of conflict while holding the intragroup structure constant. Experimental team games also point to parochial cooperation—as opposed to outgroup spite—as the main motivation for individual participation in conflict. I will present experimental work that incorporates the perception of conflict, which has been overlooked by past research. The results of this work strongly suggest that the willingness to participate in conflict, and the motivation for doing so, crucially depend on whether conflict is perceived and construed at the individual or at the group level. Depending on the level of perception, conflict can either increase or decrease intragroup cooperation, and the motivation for cooperation can be either parochial cooperation or outgroup spite.