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Human adults prefer to cooperate even when it is costly
Title / Series / Name
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Publication Volume
289
Publication Issue
1973
Pages
Editors
Keywords
Joint action
Cooperation
Costs
Utility
Cooperation
Costs
Utility
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/14194
Abstract
Joint actions are cooperative activities where humans coordinate their actions to achieve individual and shared goals. While the motivation to engage in joint action is clear when a goal cannot be achieved by individuals alone, we asked whether humans are motivated to act together even when acting together is not necessary and implies incurring additional costs compared to individual goal achievement. Using a utility-based empirical approach, we investigated the extent of humans' preference for joint action over individual action, when the instrumental costs of performing joint actions outweigh the benefits. The results of five experiments showed that human adults have a stable preference for joint action, even if individual action is more effective to achieve a certain goal. We propose that such preferences can be understood as ascribing additional reward value to performing actions together.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2022
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1098/rspb.2022.0128