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 language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 154-171 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science |
Volume | 614 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 2007 |
Keywords
- Collective action
- Egalitarian outcomes
- Empathy
- Evolutionary psychology
- Phenotypic variation
- Prisoner's dilemma