Team Player
Roderick Swaab et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Five studies examined the relationship between talent and team performance. Two survey studies found that people believe there is a linear and nearly monotonic relationship between talent and performance: Participants expected that more talent improves performance and that this relationship never turns negative. However, building off research on status conflicts, we predicted that talent facilitates performance — but only up to a point, after which the benefits of more talent decrease and eventually become detriments as intrateam coordination suffers. We also predicted that the level of task interdependence is a key determinant of when more talent is detrimental rather than beneficial. Three archival studies revealed that the too-much-talent effect emerged when team members were interdependent (football and basketball) but not independent (baseball). Our basketball analysis established the mediating role of team coordination. When teams need to come together, more talent can tear them apart.
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Handshaking Promotes Cooperative Dealmaking
Juliana Schroeder et al.
Harvard Working Paper, May 2014
Abstract:
Humans use subtle sources of information — like nonverbal behavior — to determine whether to act cooperatively or antagonistically when they negotiate. Handshakes are particularly consequential nonverbal gestures in negotiations because people feel comfortable initiating negotiations with them and believe they signal cooperation (Study 1). We show that handshakes increase cooperative behaviors, affecting outcomes for integrative and distributive negotiations. In two studies with MBA students, pairs who shook hands before integrative negotiations obtained higher joint outcomes (Studies 2a and 2b). Pairs randomly assigned to shake hands were more likely to openly reveal their preferences on trade-off issues, which improved joint outcomes (Study 3). In a fourth study using a distributive negotiation, pairs of executives assigned to shake hands were less likely to lie about their preferences and crafted agreements that split the bargaining zone more equally. Together, these studies show that handshaking promotes the adoption of cooperative strategies and influences negotiation outcomes.
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Cynicism in negotiation: When communication increases buyers’ skepticism
Eyal Ert, Stephanie Creary & Max Bazerman
Judgment and Decision Making, May 2014, Pages 191–198
Abstract:
The economic literature on negotiation shows that strategic concerns can be a barrier to agreement, even when the buyer values the good more than the seller. Yet behavioral research demonstrates that human interaction can overcome these strategic concerns through communication. We show that there is also a downside of this human interaction: cynicism. Across two studies we focus on a seller-buyer interaction in which the buyer has uncertain knowledge about the goods for sale, but has a positive expected payoff from saying “yes” to the available transaction. Study 1 shows that most buyers accept offers made by computers, but that acceptance rates drop significantly when offers are made by human sellers who communicate directly with buyers. Study 2 clarifies that this effect results from allowing human sellers to communicate with buyers, and shows that such communication focuses the buyers’ attention on the seller’s trustworthiness. The mere situation of negotiated interaction increases buyers’ attention to the sellers’ self-serving motives and, consequently, buyers’ cynicism. Unaware of this downside of interaction, sellers actually prefer to have the opportunity to communicate with buyers.
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“I am Disgusted by Your Proposal”: The Effects of a Strategic Flinch in Negotiations
Neil Fassina & Glen Whyte
Group Decision and Negotiation, July 2014, Pages 901-920
Abstract:
To flinch in negotiations refers to verbal or physical displays of shock, disgust, or disbelief made in response to an opening offer. We investigated the impact of advising negotiators to strategically flinch in distributive bargaining. In experiment 1, negotiators who flinched claimed significantly more value than negotiators who did not flinch. Targets of a flinch, however, viewed the negotiation relationship less positively than negotiators in a control condition. Yet, flinching appeared to have no effect on the target negotiators’ perceptions of how well they did. In experiment 2, the notion that a subtle flinch might still facilitate value claiming but without imperilling the bargaining relationship was supported. Implications for negotiation theory and practice, and directions for future research, are discussed.
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Measuring Aggregate Social Capital Using Census Response Rates
David Martin & Benjamin Newman
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the importance of social capital to political science research, conventional means of measuring it are subject to a range of problems, including nonresponse bias, declining validity over time, and/or a lack of conceptual coherence. We argue that, in the case of the United States, rates of response to the decennial census represent a powerful yet overlooked measure for aggregate social capital. In this research note, we elaborate a theoretical rationale for the measure and empirically validate it, showing across multiple data sets and levels of geographic aggregation that census response rates (CRR) strongly predict various dimensions of social capital. Our findings highlight an important opportunity for social capital scholars to use existing governmental data to better measure geospatial variation in a key social science construct.
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Amazonian horticulturalists live in larger, more related groups than hunter-gatherers
Robert Walker
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
The relatedness of human groups has important ramifications for kin (group) selection to favor more collective action and invites the potential for more exploitation by political leaders. Endogamous marriages among kin create intensive kinship systems with high group relatedness, while exogamous marriages among nonrelatives create extensive kinship with low group relatedness. Here, a sample of 58 societies (7,565 adults living in 353 residential groups) shows that average group relatedness is higher in lowland horticulturalists than in hunter-gatherers. Higher relatedness in horticulturalists is remarkable given that village sizes are larger, harboring over twice the average number of adults than in hunter-gatherer camps. The relatedness differential between subsistence regimes increases for larger group sizes. Large and dense networks of kin may have favored an increased propensity for some forms of in-group cooperation and political inequality that emerged relatively recently in human history, after the advent of farming.
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“Do the Right Thing:” The Effects of Moral Suasion on Cooperation
Ernesto Dal Bó & Pedro Dal Bó
Journal of Public Economics, September 2014, Pages 28–38
Abstract:
The use of moral appeals to affect the behavior of others is pervasive (from the pulpit to ethics classes) but little is known about the effects of moral suasion on behavior. In a series of experiments we study whether moral suasion affects behavior in voluntary contribution games and the mechanisms by which behavior is altered. We find that observing a message with a moral standard according to the golden rule or, alternatively, utilitarian philosophy, results in a significant but transitory increase in contributions above the levels observed for subjects that did not receive a message or received a message that advised them to contribute without a moral rationale. When players have the option of punishing each other after the contribution stage, the effect of the moral messages on contributions becomes persistent: punishments and moral messages interact to sustain cooperation. We also investigate the mechanisms through which moral suasion operates and find it affects both expectations and preferences.
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Raising the Price of Talk: An Experimental Analysis of Transparent Leadership
Daniel Houser et al.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does transparent leadership promote cooperative groups? We address this issue using a public goods experiment with exogenously selected leaders who are able to send non-binding contribution suggestions to the group. To investigate the effect of transparency in this setting we vary the ease with which a leader's actions are known by the group. We find leaders’ suggestions encourage cooperation in all treatments, but that both leaders and their group members are more likely to follow leaders’ recommendations when institutions are transparent so that non-leaders can easily see what the leader does. Consequently, transparency leads to significantly more cooperation, higher group earnings and reduced variation in contributions among group members.
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Physical Attractiveness and Cooperation in a Prisoner’s Dilemma Game
Mizuho Shinada & Toshio Yamagishi
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
The modulating role of age on the relationship between physical attractiveness and cooperativeness in a prisoner’s dilemma game (PDG) was investigated. Previous studies have shown that physical attractiveness is negatively related to cooperative choices among young men but not young women. Following the argument that the negative relationship between physical attractiveness and cooperation is a product of short-term mating strategies among attractive men, we predicted that this relationship is unique to young men and absent among women and older men. We tested this hypothesis with 175 participants (aged 22–69 years). The results showed that physical attractiveness was negatively related to cooperative behavior among young men but not among women or older men. We further observed that the negative relationship between physical attractiveness and cooperation among young men was particularly strong when attractiveness was judged by women.
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The temporal course of the influence of anxiety on fairness considerations
Yi Luo et al.
Psychophysiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study investigated the potential causes of anxious people's social avoidance. The classic ultimatum game was utilized in concert with electroencephalogram recording. Participants were divided into two groups according to levels of trait anxiety as identified by a self-report scale. The behavioral results indicate that high-anxious participants were more prone to reject human-proposed than computer-proposed unequal offers compared to their low-anxious counterparts. The event-related potential results indicate that the high-anxious group showed a larger feedback-related negativity when receiving unequal monetary offers than equal ones, and a larger P3 when receiving human-proposed offers than computer-proposed ones, but these effects were absent in the low-anxious group. We suggest anxious people's social avoidance results from hypersensitivity to unequal distributions during interpersonal interactions.
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Social learning in cooperative dilemmas
Shakti Lamba
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 22 July 2014
Abstract:
Helping is a cornerstone of social organization and commonplace in human societies. A major challenge for the evolutionary sciences is to explain how cooperation is maintained in large populations with high levels of migration, conditions under which cooperators can be exploited by selfish individuals. Cultural group selection models posit that such large-scale cooperation evolves via selection acting on populations among which behavioural variation is maintained by the cultural transmission of cooperative norms. These models assume that individuals acquire cooperative strategies via social learning. This assumption remains empirically untested. Here, I test this by investigating whether individuals employ conformist or payoff-biased learning in public goods games conducted in 14 villages of a forager–horticulturist society, the Pahari Korwa of India. Individuals did not show a clear tendency to conform or to be payoff-biased and are highly variable in their use of social learning. This variation is partly explained by both individual and village characteristics. The tendency to conform decreases and to be payoff-biased increases as the value of the modal contribution increases. These findings suggest that the use of social learning in cooperative dilemmas is contingent on individuals' circumstances and environments, and question the existence of stably transmitted cultural norms of cooperation.
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Strategic Social Learning And The Population Dynamics Of Human Behavior: The Game Of Go
Bret Alexander Beheim, Calvin Thigpen & Richard Mcelreath
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Human culture is widely believed to undergo evolution, via mechanisms rooted in the nature of human cognition. A number of theories predict the kinds of human learning strategies, as well as the population dynamics that result from their action. There is little work, however, that quantitatively examines the evidence for these strategies and resulting cultural evolution within human populations. One of the obstacles is the lack of individual-level data with which to link transmission events to larger cultural dynamics. Here, we address this problem with a rich quantitative database from the East Asian board game known as Go. We draw from a large archive of Go games spanning the last six decades of professional play, and find evidence that the evolutionary dynamics of particular cultural variants are driven by a mix of individual and social learning processes. Particular players vary dramatically in their sensitivity to population knowledge, which also varies by age and nationality. The dynamic patterns of opening Go moves are consistent with an ancient, ongoing arms race within the game itself.