How People's Assumptions About Relationships Drive Cooperation
People cooperate or defect based on what they believe about their interdependence with others—not just the actual facts. A new review shows that organizations and policymakers can reshape behavior by clarifying how decisions affect everyone's outcomes, offering a practical lever for improving teamwork and compliance without changing incentives.
Originaltitel: Inferences about interdependence shape cooperation.
During social interactions in daily life, people possess imperfect knowledge of their interdependence (i.e., how behaviors affect each person's outcomes), and what people infer about their interdependence can shape their behaviors. We review theory and research that suggests people can infer their interdependence with others along several dimensions, including mutual dependence, power, and corresponding-versus-conflicting interests. We discuss how perceptions of interdependence affect how people cooperate and punish others' defection in everyday life. We propose that people understand their interdependence with others through knowledge of the action space, cues during social interactions (e.g., partner behaviors), and priors based on experience. Finally, we describe how learning interdependence could occur through domain-specific and domain-general mechanisms.