Coping with noise in social dilemmas: Group representatives fare worse than individuals because they lack trust in others’ benign intentions

摘要

textabstractResearch on interindividual–intergroup discontinuity has illuminated distinct patterns of cognition,\udmotivation, and behavior in interindividual versus intergroup contexts. However, it has examined\udthese processes in laboratory environments with perfect transparency, whereas real-life interactions\udare often characterized by noise (i.e., misperceptions and unintended errors). This research compared\udinterindividual and intergroup interactions in the presence or absence of noise. In a laboratory\udexperiment, participants played 35 rounds of a dyadic give-some dilemma, in which they acted as\udindividuals or group representatives. Noise was manipulated, such that players’ intentions either were\udperfectly translated into behavior or could deviate from their intentions in certain rounds (resulting in\udless cooperative behavior). Noise was more detrimental to cooperation in intergroup contexts than in\udinterindividual contexts, because (a) participants who formed benign impressions of the other player\udcoped better with noise, and (b) participants were less likely to form such benign impressions in\udintergroup than interindividual interactions.