The Initiating Context And Facilitating Factors Of Cooperation In Interpersonal Perspective

Cooperation,defined as acting together with others to increase shared performance,is a universal human behavior and can be observed across cultures.Previous studies have demonstrated that interpersonal cooperation involves many processes,such as co-representing,sensormotor information sharing,and action monitoring.Further,by employing hyperscanning approach,studies reveal inter-brain synchronization(IBS)between two individuals while cooperating.How does interpersonal cooperation evolve,however,is still unclear.The current study tries to investige this theoretical issue from two aspects ? the initiation and facilitation of cooperation—from the interpersonal perspective.For the initiation of cooperation,relations of mutual interdependence have been regarded as necessary for cooperation to(social interdependence theory);however,many studies in the social sciences indicate that repeated interaction sufficed to establish cooperation(social interation hypotheis).The roles that interdependence and interaction play in the initiation of cooperation need to be explored.Further,previously studies have demonstrated that individual's behavior could be modulated by tasks and cooperators properties.Among the many factors,task assignment pattern,gender composition,and relationship type of dyads are likely to affect the level of interpersonal interdependence or interaction.However,whether these tasks and cooperators factors can modulate interpersonal cooperation,and how,remain unknown.The current study attempted to address the above theoretical issures(i.e.,the initiation and facilitation of interpersonal cooperation)through six experiments.Functional near-infrared spectroscopy(fNIRS)based hyperscanning technique was employed to simultaneously measure the brain activities of the interacting individuals.Thus,the cooperation performance and IBS were combined to describe the level of interpersonal cooperation in the current study.Experiment 1-3 investigated the roles interdependence and interaction play in the initiation of cooperation.Experiment 1 created a context containing both interdependence and interaction elements.Results revealed improved cooperation performance and significant behavior-related IBS during the task.It indicated that individuals could form cooperation in this context and the IBS could be regard as a neural index of interpersonal cooperation.In Experiment 2,individuals were in an interactive relation with no interdependence between them.Results showed that the behavior performance was correlated between two individuals.Further,bevavior-related IBS was found and served as a mediator between two individuals'behavior.These findings indicated that interpersonal cooperation could gradually built between interacting individuals even though there was no interdependence between them.In Experment 3,the goal/reward of individuals were independent but there was no interaction between inviduals.In this context,no behavior-related IBS was found.These findings indicated that direct interaction between individuals was sufficient and essential,to induce cooperation.Besides,a context containing individuals'interdependence and interactions could be an ideal context to induce cooperation.Experiment 4?6 investigated the influence factors on the interpersonal cooperation.Experiment 4 focused on the effect of task assignment(i.e.,symmetric vs.asymmetric)on cooperation.Higher cooperation efficacy and IBS was found when individuals were performing asymmetric behaviors,compared to the symmetric behavior.Experiment 5 investigated the effect of gender composition of dyads on interpersonal cooperation.Results showed that cooperation could be modulated by gender composition;significant IBS was only found in mixed-gender dyads.Further,Experiment 6 found that dyads with romantic relationship(i.e.,lovers)presented better behavior performance than friends or strangers,and demonstrated increased IBS at right superior frontal cortex.Meanwhile,stronger directional synchronization from females to males than from males to females was found in lover dyads,suggesting different roles for females and males during cooperation.Together,interpersonal cooperation was modulated by task and cooperator properties,and asymmetric task assignment pattern,mixed-gender composition and romantic relationship would facilitate interpersonal cooperation.Based on the above findings,the implications of the present study lie in the following aspects.First,the study revealaed that interpersonal interation was enough to induce cooperation,providing evidence for social interaction hypothesis.These findings raised the possibility to enrich and extend the related theories(e.g.,social interdependence theory).Second,asymmetric task assignment pattern,mixed-gender composition and romantic relationship were found to facilitate interpersonal cooperation,which indicated cooperation might be facilitated by interpersonal complementary.By using fNIRS-based hyperscanning technique and IBS index,the current study explored the initiation and facilitation of interpersonal cooperation.The study will provide a new method and technique for relavent researches in the educational field.Moreover,the present study provides inspirations for practically promoting cooperation.