Social setting, intuition and experience in laboratory experiments interact to shape cooperative decision-making

• Published in: Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Vol. 282; no. 1811; p. 20150237
• Main Authors: Capraro, Valerio, Cococcioni, Giorgia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England The Royal Society 22.07.2015
• Subjects: Adult; Cooperation; Cooperative Behavior; Decision Making; Dual Process; Female; Humans; India; Intuition; Learning; Male; Prisoner Dilemma; Random Allocation; Social Environment; Time Factors; India; dual process; learning; cooperation
• ISSN: 0962-8452; 1471-2954
• DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2015.0237

Recent studies suggest that cooperative decision-making in one-shot interactions is a history-dependent dynamic process: promoting intuition versus deliberation typically has a positive effect on cooperation (dynamism) among people living in a cooperative setting and with no previous experience in economic games on cooperation (history dependence). Here, we report on a laboratory experiment exploring how these findings transfer to a non-cooperative setting. We find two major results: (i) promoting intuition versus deliberation has no effect on cooperative behaviour among inexperienced subjects living in a non-cooperative setting; (ii) experienced subjects cooperate more than inexperienced subjects, but only under time pressure. These results suggest that cooperation is a learning process, rather than an instinctive impulse or a self-controlled choice, and that experience operates primarily via the channel of intuition. Our findings shed further light on the cognitive basis of human cooperative decision-making and provide further support for the recently proposed social heuristics hypothesis.