A dual-edged sword: Empathy and collective action in the prisoner's dilemma

John A. Sautter*, Levente Littvay, Brennen Bearnes

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Researchers guided by evolutionary psychology have theorized that in an iterated prisoner's dilemma, reciprocal behavior is a product of evolutionary design, where individuals are guided by an innate sense of fairness for equal outcomes. Empathy as a prosocial emotion could be a key to understanding the psychological underpinnings of why and who tends to cooperate in a collective act. In short, why are some individuals more prone to participate in collective action? The authors test the hypothesis that a prosocial psychological disposition, stemming from self-reported empathy, will lead to group-oriented behavior in an iterated prisoner's dilemma game. Results suggest that an empathetic disposition does not lead to a higher rate of cooperation but interacts with environmental conditioning to produce either a highly cooperative or highly uncooperative personality type.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)154-171
Number of pages18
JournalAnnals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Volume614
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2007

Keywords

  • Collective action
  • Egalitarian outcomes
  • Empathy
  • Evolutionary psychology
  • Phenotypic variation
  • Prisoner's dilemma

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