The Influence Of Opponent’s Indirect Competence Cues On Cooperative Behavior In The Prisoner’s Dilemma Game

Cooperation in social dilemma is an act in which two(or more)parties in a game have conflicting interests,and one party is willing to pay a certain cost to maximize the common good under uncertain conditions where it is not clear what the opponent will choose.If the other party cooperates,it can maximize the common good as it wishes;If the other party reciprocates,the interests of the betrayer are maximized and the interests of the collaborators are minimized.Therefore,accurate prediction of the other party’s behavior has become the key to determining whether to cooperate,and the other party’s competence clues are often used as an important basis for judging whether they can provide returns.Previous research has found that in a real game situation,when the other party shows a competence cue directly related to the current game goal(that is,a clue that indicates its direct reciprocal ability,such as power,socioeconomic status,wealth cues,etc.,may be called "direct competence cues"),people are interest–oriented realists and are more willing to cooperate with such a person with high competence.However,few studies have focused on how people respond when the other party exhibits a competency cue that is not directly related to the current game goal(i.e.,a cue that does not indicate its direct reciprocal competence,such as general academic competence,work competence,or a special competence,which may be called an "indirect competence cue"),especially the lack of in–depth discussion of the underlying psychosocial mechanisms and influencing factors of this response.Since the former clue directly predicts the possibility of direct reciprocity in the current game,it does not directly predict its competence as a personal trait or quality,its impact on people’s cooperative behavior is more understood or interpreted as the role of power and socioeconomic status,reflecting an exogenous simple reciprocal mechanism,more in accordance with the rational economic man law of economics.Although the latter competence cue does not predict the possibility of direct reciprocity in the current game situation,it predicts the other party’s competence as a personal trait or quality,which is an important indirect social cue,and its impact on cooperative behavior in social dilemma involves more complex social cognition and inference processes.Therefore,an in–depth exploration of whether,how,and when such competence cues influence cooperative behavior in social distress not only helps to deepen the understanding of cooperative decision–making processes,but also helps to solve the long–standing "Smith mystery" of economics of " support the strong " or " helping the weak ".Although some studies have explored these issues,they are relatively fragmented,and there are many contradictions or inconsistencies in both the results obtained and the interpretation of the results.Some studies have found that people will cooperate with people with higher competence than themselves in some aspects out of "envy of the strong",and some studies have found that people will not cooperate with people with higher competence than themselves out of "prevention" or "jealousy".The purpose of this study is to systematically explore based on existing research how the competence cues of the other party in the typical social dilemma of the prisoner’s dilemma game affect the cooperative behavior of the parties,and how this influence is regulated by the distance(psychological distance)of the two parties,to make up for the shortcomings of the existing research and clarify the relevant problems.The study consisted of three interrelated,progressively progressive sub–studies.Study 1 aims to answer the question of how the indirect competence clues of the other party in the prisoner’s dilemma game affect the cooperative behavior of the parties.To achieve this purpose,Experiment 1 uses meta–analysis to explore the general trend of the relationship between the opponent’s indirect competence cues and the cooperative behavior of the parties in the existing relevant research results,to preliminarily answer the above questions,and select the manipulation materials of the opponent’s indirect competence cues to be used in subsequent experiments based on these studies.The pre–experiment revised and tested the selected competence cue manipulation materials to ensure that they can induce the subject’s perception of high and low competence.On this basis,experiment 2a uses a single–factor(high–competence/low–competence/unknown competence group)design to record the number of participants’ cooperation in five rounds of non–feedback prisoner’s dilemma,and investigates whether the indirect competence cues of the opponent in the apprentice’s dilemma game affect the participant’s cooperative behavior.Since the competence of experiment 2a to manipulate the material cannot exclude the interference effect of familiar group stereotypes,experiment 2b draws on the virtual group paradigm on distant planets created by Hoffman and Hurst(1990)to circumvent the role of familiar group stereotypes,and at the same time adopts an inter–participant design to test the robustness of the results of experiment 2a.Study 2 aims to answer the question of why the indirect competence cues of the other party in the prisoner’s dilemma game affect the cooperative behavior of the parties.According to the theory of direct and indirect reciprocity in social exchange,people are more willing to cooperate with the other party only if they have the possibility of direct or indirect reciprocity.According to the goal–expectation theory,the reciprocal likelihood of the other party depends on the subjective expectations of the parties.Under the condition that other information is unclear,the indirect competence clue of the other party becomes the only clue that the party expects its possibility of reciprocity.High–competence leads may bring both expectations of the potential direct reciprocity of the other party and the potential indirect reciprocity of the other party.In the prisoner’s dilemma game,the former may manifest itself as a direct expectation of the benefits that the other party may bring from cooperation,and the latter may manifest itself as a concern for the possible reputation value of cooperation with the other party.To test this hypothesis,experiments 3 and 4 adopt the experimental paradigms of experiments 2a and 2b respectively,and introduce cooperation expectation and reputation attention as potential mediating variables,on the one hand,to further test the robustness of the results of experiments 2a and 2b,and on the other hand,to examine whether the two variables introduced mediate the influence of each other’s competence clues on cooperative behavior and their relative effects.Because in the prisoner’s dilemma game,the opponent’s indirect competence clues only reflect the "value" attribute of the other party,but do not reflect the "relationship" attribute of the other party,and the latter is also an important variable affecting the cooperative behavior in this dilemma.A very important and interesting question is: will the influence of indirect competence cues as value attributes of the other party have different on cooperative behavior due to the psychological distance between the other party and the party? Study III aims to answer this question.Based on the paradigm of manipulating psychological distance in the existing literature,experiment 5 adopts the social distance(stranger/friend)manipulation paradigm that has been shown to induce psychological distance to investigate whether psychological distance moderates the influence of the other party’s indirect competence cues on cooperative behavior in the prisoner’s dilemma game,and experiment 6 adopts the spatial distance(distance 1000km/10km)manipulation paradigm that has been shown to have a relatively weak effect of inducing psychological distance to investigate whether the moderating effect of psychological distance still exists under such conditions.The results of the study showed that:(1)The meta–analysis results showed a moderate positive correlation between the indirect competence cues of the other party and the cooperative behavior,while experiments 2 a and 2b showed that the indirect competence cues of the other party in the prisoner’s dilemma game positively predicted the cooperation level of the participants,that is,the participants cooperated the most with the high–competence people,followed by the control group,and the least low–competence people.(2)The participants’ cooperation expectations and reputation concerns in the face of different competence levels mediated the influence of indirect competence cues on cooperation level.The higher the other party’s competence,the higher the participants’ expectations for their cooperation,and the more concerned they are about the reputation value brought by cooperation,and therefore the more willing they are to cooperate with them(relative mediation effect: cooperation expectations >reputation concerns).(3)Whether it is through the social distance manipulation paradigm with strong effect or the spatial distance manipulation paradigm with weak effect,it is found that changing the psychological distance between the other party and the party moderates the influence of the other party’s indirect competence clues on cooperative behavior in the prisoner’s dilemma game.Specifically,the indirect competence cue effect described above exists only when the psychological distance from the other party is far,and this effect disappears when the other party’s psychological distance is closer.These results support the findings of existing research on the positive prediction of cooperative behavior in social dilemma by indirect competence cues of each other,and reveal the underlying social cognitive mechanism of this effect,which is helpful to deepen the understanding of the complex process of cooperative decision–making in social dilemma,and to some extent make up for the lack of research in related fields.The introduction of relational attributes(psychological distance)and their relationship with value attributes in a certain sense involves the long–standing "Smith’s mystery" in economics: are people the rational economic people described by Smith in The Wealth of Nations,or the compassionate social beings described in The Theory of Moral Sentiments? The results of this study show that when faced with distant interaction objects,people are value–oriented rational economic people,and when faced with closer interaction objects,people are social people who are less affected by economic rationality.On the one hand,this has certain theoretical significance for solving the "private mystery",on the other hand,it means that people are not pure rational people when making cooperative decisions in social dilemmas,which strongly supports the concept of limited rational cooperation,and has certain enlightenment value for how people make cooperative decisions for themselves and others in real life.