by Charlotte Rossetti
My first paper, (Mis)perceiving cooperativeness, is a review done in collaboration with my two supervisors, Christian Hilbe and Oliver, on an invitation from guest editors of the journal Current Opinion in Psychology.
The theme of the paper was perceptions of cooperation. As such, we reviewed the recent literature on how human subjects perceive the cooperativeness of their co-players. Research in the field has already pointed out the importance of beliefs when it comes to cooperation. If players expect their partner to cooperate, they are more likely to cooperate themselves. The question we seek to answer in our review is how beliefs and expectations about the cooperativeness of other co-players formed, and to which cues do subjects attend to in order to form these beliefs. In addition, we are interested to see if, and when, these beliefs are correct and accurate.
From the literature we reviewed, we were able to make out three types of cues that subjects use to form their beliefs and expectations of cooperativeness: Behavioural cues, Personal cues, and Situational cues. Behavioural cues refer to the past actions of the co-player. This can be whether the co-player previously gave money to charity, punished non-cooperator or simply cooperated in an earlier game. Personal cues refer to physical or demographic characteristics, such as gender, wealth, or facial attractiveness. Situational cues refer to the environment of the interaction surrounding the cooperative decision. These can be the payoffs, decision time, or the possibility to communicate.
Some of these have stronger predictive power than others. Overall, personal attributes are unreliable indicators of cooperative behaviour, yet subjects do rely on them to form their beliefs of cooperativeness. Nonetheless, it seems that when there are other, different cues available, people are able to recognise which ones are more useful, indicating that relying on low quality cues might be a last resort strategy.