Author:

Keywords:

individual-differences, impression-formation, close relationships, category accessibility, conscious awareness, experimental games, trait information, prisoners-dilemma, ring measure, real-life, Social Sciences, Psychology, Social, Psychology, INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES, CATEGORY ACCESSIBILITY, CONSCIOUS AWARENESS, TRAIT INFORMATION, RING MEASURE, REAL-LIFE, PERCEPTION, MORALITY, WILLINGNESS, MOTIVATION, Adult, Analysis of Variance, Cooperative Behavior, Cues, Female, Game Theory, Humans, Male, Morals, Orientation, Social Values, Students, Task Performance and Analysis, Word Association Tests, 1505 Marketing, 1701 Psychology, 1702 Cognitive Sciences, Social Psychology, 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology, 5205 Social and personality psychology

Abstract:

Low and high consistent pro-socials and pro-selfs were primed with neutral, morality, or might concepts in mixed-motive situations. The authors expected participants' social value orientation to influence cooperative behavior among (a) high consistent individuals in all prime conditions and (b) low consistent individuals in the neutral prime condition only. The authors also expected the primes to influence cooperative behavior more among low than high consistent individuals. Four experiments using supraliminal (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) or subliminal (Experiment 3) priming and 2-person (Experiments 1-3) or N-person (Experiment 4) social dilemmas partially supported these initial predictions. One intriguing exception was that morality primes reduced cooperation among high consistent pro-selfs. Experiments 2-4 allowed testing for the potential role of expectations in shaping participants' cooperative behavior.