Economic games for the study of peace.

Economic games provide models of real-world contexts in which researchers can probe dispositional and structural determinants of intergroup relations. Most intergroup games focus on determinants of aggression between groups and constrain the possibilities for peace. However, paradigms such as the intergroup parochial and universal cooperation game allow for peaceful intergroup relations and can be adapted for the study of peace.

Expressions of moral disgust reflect both disgust and anger.

ABSTRACTPeople often appear to conflate anger and disgust, seemingly using expressions of both emotions interchangeably in response to moral violations. Yet, anger and moral disgust differ in their antecedents and consequences. These empirical observations are associated with two broad theoretical perspectives: one describes expressions of moral disgust as metaphors for anger, whereas the other describes moral disgust as functionally distinct from anger. Both accounts have received empirical support from separate and seemingly inconsistent literatures. The present study seeks to resolve this inconsistency by focusing on the different ways moral emotions have been measured. We formalise three theoretical models of moral emotions: one in which expressions of disgust are purely associated with anger (but not physiological disgust), one in which disgust and anger are fully separated and have distinct functions, and an integrative model that accommodates both metaphorical use in language and distinctive function. We test these models on responses to moral violations (four studies; N = 1608). Our results suggest that moral disgust has distinct functions, but that expressions of moral disgust are sometimes used to convey moralistic anger. These findings have implications for the theoretical status and measurement of moral emotions.

The Cooperation Databank: Machine-Readable Science Accelerates Research Synthesis.

Publishing studies using standardized, machine-readable formats will enable machines to perform meta-analyses on demand. To build a semantically enhanced technology that embodies these functions, we developed the Cooperation Databank (CoDa)-a databank that contains 2,636 studies on human cooperation (1958-2017) conducted in 78 societies involving 356,283 participants. Experts annotated these studies along 312 variables, including the quantitative results (13,959 effects). We designed an ontology that defines and relates concepts in cooperation research and that can represent the relationships between results of correlational and experimental studies. We have created a research platform that, given the data set, enables users to retrieve studies that test the relation of variables with cooperation, visualize these study results, and perform (a) meta-analyses, (b) metaregressions, (c) estimates of publication bias, and (d) statistical power analyses for future studies. We leveraged the data set with visualization tools that allow users to explore the ontology of concepts in cooperation research and to plot a citation network of the history of studies. CoDa offers a vision of how publishing studies in a machine-readable format can establish institutions and tools that improve scientific practices and knowledge.

Subjective interdependence and prosocial behaviour.

Interdependence describes the mutual control different individuals have over their own and others' outcomes. Recent research suggests that interdependence is mentally represented along dimensions of mutual dependence, conflict (vs correspondence) of interests, and relative power. People construe interdependence from cues in their social environment, but subjective perceptions are also influenced by stable individual differences. Importantly, perceptions of interdependence are associated with prosocial behaviour. Perceived conflict of interests, in particular, is detrimental to prosociality, whereas mutual dependence can foster prosocial behaviour. Further, perceived conflict of interests and power may together shape cooperative outcomes. Future research may help elucidate the roots of cross-cultural differences in subjective interdependence and examine how formal and informal institutions promote prosocial behaviour by shifting our perceptions of interdependence.

Prosocial and punishment behaviors in everyday life.

Theory and experiments suggest people have different strategies (1) to condition their prosocial behavior in ways that maximize individual benefits and (2) to punish others who have exploited their own and others' prosocial behaviors. To date, most research testing existing theories has relied on experiments. However, documenting prosocial and punishment behaviors outside of the laboratory via experience sampling and diary methods can yield additional, rich insights. Recent work demonstrates these methods can describe social behaviors in daily life and be used to test theory about how behaviors change across situations and relationships. These methods have exposed discrepancies between what people experience in daily life and the problems researchers want to solve to understand the nature of human prosociality.

Gossip and reputation in everyday life.

Gossip-a sender communicating to a receiver about an absent third party-is hypothesized to impact reputation formation, partner selection, and cooperation. Laboratory experiments have found that people gossip about others' cooperativeness and that they use gossip to condition their cooperation. Here, we move beyond the laboratory and test several predictions from theories of indirect reciprocity and reputation-based partner selection about the content of everyday gossip and how people use it to update the reputation of others in their social network. In a Dutch community sample (N = 309), we sampled daily events in which people either sent or received gossip about a target over 10 days (ngossip = 5284). Gossip senders frequently shared information about targets' cooperativeness and did so in ways that minimize potential retaliation from targets. Receivers overwhelmingly believed gossip to be true and updated their evaluation of targets based on gossip. In turn, a positive shift in the evaluation of a target was associated with higher intentions to help them in future interactions, and with lower intentions to avoid them in the future. Thus, gossip is used in daily life to impact and update reputations in a way that enables partner selection and indirect reciprocity. This article is part of the theme issue 'The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling'.

Interdependence and cooperation in daily life.

Philosophers and scientists have long debated the nature of human social interactions and the prevalence of mutual dependence, conflict of interests, and power asymmetry in social situations. Yet, there is surprisingly little empirical work documenting the patterns of interdependence that people experience in daily life. We use experience sampling to study how people think about 3 dimensions of interdependence in daily life and how these dimensions relate to cooperation. In Study 1, 139 romantic couples (n = 278) reported on situations experienced with their partner (k = 6,766); in Study 2, individuals (n = 284) reported on situations experienced with any other person (k = 7,248), over the course of 1 week. Across both samples, we found that most social interactions were perceived as containing moderate mutual dependence, equal power, and corresponding interests. When couples reported on the same situation (Study 1), they largely agreed on their experienced interdependence and cooperation, suggesting that their reports reflect an underlying shared reality. In daily interactions across both samples, higher mutual dependence and lower conflict of interests were associated with more cooperation, whereas relative power was not directly related to cooperation. These associations replicated in laboratory experiments (Study 2). In daily life, high mutual dependence and high relative power exacerbated the negative relation between conflict of interests and cooperation. Finally, prevalent patterns of interdependence and the experience of specific interdependent situations affected multiple relationship outcomes. Our findings stress the importance of studying a diverse array of interdependent situations-and especially situations with corresponding interests-to better understand cooperation in daily life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The prevalence of dyads in social life.

A salient objective feature of the social environment in which people find themselves is group size. Knowledge of group size is highly relevant to behavioural scientists given that humans spend considerable time in social settings and the number of others influences much of human behaviour. What size of group do people actually look for and encounter in everyday life? Here we report four survey studies and one experience-sampling study (total N = 4,398) which provide evidence for the predominance of the dyad in daily life. Relative to larger group sizes, dyads are most common across a wide range of activities (e.g., conversations, projects, holidays, movies, sports, bars) obtained from three time moments (past activities, present, and future activities), sampling both mixed-sex and same-sex groups, with three different methodological approaches (retrospective reports, real-time data capture, and preference measures) in the United States and the Netherlands. We offer four mechanisms that may help explain this finding: reciprocity, coordination, social exclusion, and reproduction. The present findings advance our understanding of how individuals organize themselves in everyday life.

Fostering Attachment Security: The Role of Interdependent Situations.

This work adopts an Interdependence Theory framework to investigate how the features of interdependent situations that couples face in their daily life (i.e., situations in which partners influence each other's outcomes) shape attachment security toward their current partners. An experience sampling study examined attachment tendencies and features of interdependent situations that people experience with their partner in daily life to predict satisfaction and trust in their relationship, and changes in attachment avoidance and anxiety toward their partner over time. Results revealed that encountering situations with corresponding outcomes (i.e., situations in which both partners have the same preferences) and with information certainty (i.e., situations in which there is clear knowledge of each partner's preferences) assuage people's insecurity. On the contrary, situations of mutual current and future interdependence (i.e., situations in which each person's current or future outcomes are dependent on their partner's behavior) undermined security for anxiously attached individuals. Power (i.e., the asymmetry in partners' dependence) was not related to attachment security. This work underscores the importance of studying the role of the situations that partners experience in their daily life and the way they are related to relationship feelings and cognitions.

How do people think about interdependence? A multidimensional model of subjective outcome interdependence.

Interdependence is a fundamental characteristic of social interactions. Interdependence Theory states that 6 dimensions describe differences between social situations. Here we examine if these 6 dimensions describe how people think about their interdependence with others in a situation. We find that people (in situ and ex situ) can reliably differentiate situations according to 5, but not 6, dimensions of interdependence: (a) mutual dependence, (b) power, (c) conflict, (d) future interdependence, and (e) information certainty. This model offers a unique framework for understanding how people think about social situations compared to another recent model of situation construal (DIAMONDS). Furthermore, we examine factors that are theorized to shape perceptions of interdependence, such as situational cues (e.g., nonverbal behavior) and personality (e.g., HEXACO and Social Value Orientation). We also study the implications of subjective interdependence for emotions and cooperative behavior during social interactions. This model of subjective interdependence explains substantial variation in the emotions people experience in situations (i.e., happiness, sadness, anger, and disgust), and explains 24% of the variance in cooperation, above and beyond the DIAMONDS model. Throughout these studies, we develop and validate a multidimensional measure of subjective outcome interdependence that can be used in diverse situations and relationships-the Situational Interdependence Scale (SIS). We discuss how this model of interdependence can be used to better understand how people think about social situations encountered in close relationships, organizations, and society. (PsycINFO Database Record

In-group defense, out-group aggression, and coordination failures in intergroup conflict.

Intergroup conflict persists when and because individuals make costly contributions to their group's fighting capacity, but how groups organize contributions into effective collective action remains poorly understood. Here we distinguish between contributions aimed at subordinating out-groups (out-group aggression) from those aimed at defending the in-group against possible out-group aggression (in-group defense). We conducted two experiments in which three-person aggressor groups confronted three-person defender groups in a multiround contest game (n = 276; 92 aggressor-defender contests). Individuals received an endowment from which they could contribute to their group's fighting capacity. Contributions were always wasted, but when the aggressor group's fighting capacity exceeded that of the defender group, the aggressor group acquired the defender group's remaining resources (otherwise, individuals on both sides were left with the remainders of their endowment). In-group defense appeared stronger and better coordinated than out-group aggression, and defender groups survived roughly 70% of the attacks. This low success rate for aggressor groups mirrored that of group-hunting predators such as wolves and chimpanzees (n = 1,382 cases), hostile takeovers in industry (n = 1,637 cases), and interstate conflicts (n = 2,586). Furthermore, whereas peer punishment increased out-group aggression more than in-group defense without affecting success rates (Exp. 1), sequential (vs. simultaneous) decision-making increased coordination of collective action for out-group aggression, doubling the aggressor's success rate (Exp. 2). The relatively high success rate of in-group defense suggests evolutionary and cultural pressures may have favored capacities for cooperation and coordination when the group goal is to defend, rather than to expand, dominate, and exploit.