Empathy-induced cooperation and social dilemmas: An investigation into the influence of attribution type.

摘要

This project was designed to expand research on social dilemmas and empathy-induced cooperation. It is known that empathy can increase cooperation in a one-trial noncooperative dilemma, but what is not clear is whether empathy-induced cooperation can be sustained over time in a noncooperative environment. It is also not clear how empathy will be affected when individuals have personality information about the individual he/she is interacting with. This is an important point, since in the real world individuals often interact with people with whom they are at least somewhat familiar. In addition, the study was designed to expand knowledge on the role of attributions within social dilemmas.; The experimental design for the study was a 3 (Empathy: High, Low, and Control) by 3 (Impression information: Competitive, Cooperative, and Neutral) completely crossed between-subjects design. The social dilemma for the current study is the give some game, which expands the number of behavioral choices for participants. The programmed strategy was a noncooperative random choice strategy.; Individuals within the competitive condition were more likely to attribute other's behavior to competitiveness, while individuals in the cooperative condition were more likely to attribute other's behavior to fairness. As predicted, reported levels of empathy were affected by the empathy manipulation, with higher levels of empathy being reported in the empathy condition than in the low empathy or control conditions. Higher levels of empathy were also reported in the cooperative condition as compared to the competitive condition. In addition, empathy did decrease overtime in a noncooperative environment. In support of the hypothesis that empathy would affect levels of cooperation, higher levels of empathy led to greater cooperative behavior relative to a control. Personality information did not have a direct effect on cooperative behavior. Finally, cooperation decreased over time for all conditions in a noncooperative environment. In summary, it is clear that having some prior knowledge about an individual may influence the degree to which an individual will experience empathy. This in turn will influence the rate of cooperative behavior within a social dilemma.