Dorothee Mischkowski

Spontaneous cooperation for prosocials, but not for proselfs: Social value orientation moderates spontaneous cooperation behavior.

Cooperation is essential for the success of societies and there is an ongoing debate whether individuals have therefore developed a general spontaneous tendency to cooperate or not. Findings that cooperative behavior is related to shorter decision times provide support for the spontaneous cooperation effect, although contrary results have also been reported. We show that cooperative behavior is better described as person × situation interaction, in that there is a spontaneous cooperation effect for prosocial but not for proself persons. In three studies, one involving population representative samples from the US and Germany, we found that cooperation in a public good game is dependent on an interaction between individuals’ social value orientation and decision time. Increasing deliberation about the dilemma situation does not affect persons that are selfish to begin with, but it is related to decreasing cooperation for prosocial persons that gain positive utility from outcomes of others and score high on the related general personality trait honesty/humility. Our results demonstrate that the spontaneous cooperation hypothesis has to be qualified in that it is limited to persons with a specific personality and social values. Furthermore, they allow reconciling conflicting previous findings by identifying an important moderator for the effect.

From Spontaneous Cooperation to Spontaneous Punishment: Distinguishing the Underlying Motives Driving Spontaneous Behavior in First and Second Order Public Goods

Recent findings indicate that individuals use prosocial options as default in social dilemmas and specifically first order public goods. In two studies, we test whether this spontaneous cooperation effect generalizes to second order public goods in the form of punishment behavior in one-shot and iterated public goods, and investigate the underlying motivations. In line with spontaneous cooperation, quick punishment is larger than slow punishment. Negative affect moderates this spontaneous punishment effect in one-shot public goods, in that punishment decisions are more quickly taken by persons that are more upset about the contribution behavior of their group members. Unlike spontaneous cooperation, spontaneous punishment is not driven by dispositional prosociality, but by situational high contributions. A significant three-way interaction in an overall-analysis indicates that the spontaneous punishment effect is mainly driven by above-average, highly upset contributors.