Abstract
Previous studies employing the social game tasks have demonstrated that human cooperation and aggression behavior were affected by the individual’s social value orientation, however the effect size of this impact was relatively low and was not stable. According to the behavioral dynamics view, our behavior was impacted by interaction of personality and social situation. Social distance is a kind of social situation, and was proved to affect our social cognition and behavior. However, it is still unclear how cooperation and aggression was modulated by social value orientation and social distance.
In order to address this issue, we use the Chicken game to explore how social value orientation and social distance interactively impacted our social game behavior in the present study. Different social value orientation (Prosocial VS Proself) subjects were recruit, and were arranged to play the Chicken game with their friend and a stranger (lab assistants) through the networked computer.
The percentage of selecting cooperation was entered into a 2 (SVO: Prosocial, Proself) ×2 (Social distance: Friend, Stranger) ANOVA test. The results indicated that the main effect of social distance was significant, that is, participant selected more cooperation to friend than to stranger. More important, there was significant interaction effect between SVO and Social distance. Test of the simple effect show that only Prosocial participants selected more cooperation to friend than to stranger, the cooperative percentage was not differ in Proself participants. The mean response time (RT) of selecting cooperation and aggression were entered into a 2 (SVO: Prosocial, Proself) ×2 (Social distance: Friend, Stranger)×2 (Selection strategy: Cooperation, Aggression) ANOVA test. There was significant interaction effect between SVO and Selection strategy, indicating that the mean RT of selecting cooperation was longer than the mean RT of selecting aggression in Prosocial participants, but not in Proself participants. In addition, for investigating the potential influence of outcome feedback to ongoing decision-making, we calculated the ratio of selecting cooperation and aggression associated with each kind of outcome. The result indicated that the feedback type affected the cooperation and aggression behavior, participant was more likely to select cooperation when the feedback indicating the opponent selected cooperation.
In conclusion, the result of this study support that the human cooperation and aggression behavior were not simply influenced by social value orientation, probably were modulated by the interaction of social value orientation and other social situation, such as social distance.
Key words
social value orientation /
social distance /
cooperation /
conflict /
Chicken game
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Value Orientation and Social Distance Influenced Cooperation and Aggression in Decision-making: Evidences from Chicken Game[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2014, 37(4): 962-967
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