Decisions to cooperate are often delegated to a third party. We examined whether cooperation differs when decisions are made for a third party compared with ourselves and specified which motives are important for third-party cooperation. Participants played multiple rounds of a public goods game (PGG). In Study 1, we varied personal involvement from high to low; participants played for themselves (Self), for themselves and a third party (Shared), and solely for a third party (Third Party). Participants contributed most when personal involvement was lowest (i.e., Third Party) and least when personal involvement was high (i.e., Self). Study 2 explored if social motives underlie third-party cooperation by comparing cooperation with social (human) and non-social (computer) group members. Reducing personal involvement in the PGG (i.e., Third Party) increased cooperation in social contexts compared with non-social contexts, indicating enhanced collective interest. Increased cooperation for a third party may result from taking the other’s perspective, thereby increasing social norm preferences.
AgranovM.BisinA. (2011). Markets for other people’s money: An experimental study of the impact of the competition for funds. Journal of Economic Letter, 1-27.
2.
AlbrechtK.VolzK. G.SutterM.LaibsonD. I.von CramonD. Y. (2011). What is for me is not for you: Brain correlates of intertemporal choice for self and other. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 6, 218-225.
3.
AndreoniJ. (1988). Why free ride? Strategies and learning in public goods experiments. Journal of Public Economics, 37, 291-304.
4.
BaayenR. H.DavidsonD. J.BatesD. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 390-412.
5.
BatesD.MaechlerM.BolkerB.WalkerS. (2014). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4. R package version 1.1-7. Retrieved from http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4.
6.
BeisswangerA. H.StoneE. R.HuppJ. M.AllgaierL. (2003). Risk taking in relationships: Differences in deciding for oneself versus for a friend. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 25, 121-135.
7.
BhanjiJ. P.BeerJ. S. (2012). Taking a different perspective: Mindset influences neural regions that represent value and choice. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7, 782-793.
8.
BrainardD. H. (1997). The psychophysics toolbox. Spatial Vision, 10, 433-436.
9.
CamererC. F. (2003). Behavioural studies of strategic thinking in games. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 225-231.
10.
ChakravartyS.HarrisonG. W.HaruvyE. E.RutströmE. E. (2011). Are you risk averse over other people’s money?Southern Economic Journal, 77, 901-913.
11.
CharltonS. R.YiR.PorterC.CarterA. E.BickelW.RachlinH. (2013). Now for me, later for us? Effects of group context on temporal discounting. Journal of Behavioral Decision, 26, 118-127.
12.
CharnessG.JacksonM. O. (2009). The role of responsibility in strategic risk-taking. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 69, 241-247.
13.
CivaiC.Corradi-Dell’AcquaC.GamerM.RumiatiR. I. (2010). Are irrational reactions to unfairness truly emotionally-driven? Dissociated behavioural and emotional responses in the Ultimatum Game task. Cognition, 114, 89-95.
14.
Corradi-Dell’AcquaC.CivaiC.RumiatiR. I.FinkG. R. (2013). Disentangling self- and fairness-related neural mechanisms involved in the ultimatum game: An fMRI study. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8, 424-431.
15.
CôtéS.KrausM. W.ChengB. H.OveisC.van der LöweI.LianH.KeltnerD. (2011). Social power facilitates the effect of prosocial orientation on empathic accuracy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 217-232.
16.
De DreuC. K.Van KleefG. A. (2004). The influence of power on the information search, impression formation, and demands in negotiation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 303-319.
FehrE.FischbacherU. (2004a). Social norms and human cooperation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 185-190.
19.
FehrE.FischbacherU. (2004b). Third-party punishment and social norms. Evolution and Human Behavior, 25, 63-87.
20.
FehrE.GächterS. (2000). Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments. The American Economic Review, 90, 980-994.
21.
FischbacherU.GächterS.FehrE. (2001). Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment. Economics Letters, 71, 397-404.
22.
FrithC. D.FrithU. (2006). The neural basis of mentalizing. Neuron, 50, 531-534.
23.
GalinskyA. D.MageeJ. C.InesiM. E.GruenfeldD. H. (2006). Power and perspectives not taken. Psychological Science, 17, 1068-1074.
24.
GallagherH. L.JackA. I.RoepstorffA.FrithC. D. (2003). Imaging the intentional stance in a competitive game. NeuroImage, 16, 814-821.
25.
Garcia-RetameroR.GalesicM. (2012). Doc, what would you do if you were me? On self-other discrepancies in medical decision making. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 18, 38-51.
26.
IsaacM. R.WalkerJ. M.WilliamsA. W. (1994). Group size and the voluntary provision of public goods: Experimental evidence utilizing large groups. Journal of Public Economics, 54, 1-36.
27.
JanowskiV.CamererC. F.RangelA. (2012). Empathic choice involves vmPFC value signals that are modulated by social processing implemented in IPL. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8, 201-208.
28.
JungD.SulS.KimH. (2013). Dissociable neural processes underlying risky decisions for self versus other. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 1-12.
29.
KimH.SchnallS.WhiteM. P. (2013). Similar psychological distance reduces temporal discounting. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39, 1005-1016.
LeonhardtJ. M.KellerL. R.PechmannC. (2011). Avoiding the risk of responsibility by seeking uncertainty: Responsibility aversion and preference for indirect agency when choosing for others. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 21, 405-413.
32.
LuJ.XieX.XuJ. (2013). Desirability or feasibility: Self-other decision-making differences. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39, 144-155.
33.
McCabeK.HouserD.RyanL.SmithV.TrouardT. (2001). A functional imaging study of cooperation in two-person reciprocal exchange. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 98, 11832-11835.
34.
PelliD. G. (1997). The VideoToolbox software for visual psychophysics: Transforming numbers into movies. Spatial Vision, 10, 437-442.
35.
ProninE.OlivolaC. Y.KennedyK. A. (2008). Doing unto future selves as you would do unto others: Psychological distance and decision making. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 224-236.
R Core Team (2014). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Available from http://www.R-project.org/
38.
ReynoldsD. B.JosephJ.SherwoodR. (2009). Risky shift versus cautious shift: Determining differences in risk taking between private and public management decision-making. Journal of Business & Economics Research, 7(1), 63-78.
39.
RillingJ. K.SanfeyA. G. (2011). The neuroscience of social decision-making. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 23-48.
40.
RillingJ. K.SanfeyA. G.AronsonJ. A.NystromL. E.CohenJ. D. (2004). The neural correlates of theory of mind within interpersonal interactions. NeuroImage, 22, 1694-1703.
41.
SanfeyA. G.RillingJ. K.AronsonJ. A.NystromL. E.CohenJ. D. (2003). The neural basis of economic decision-making in the Ultimatum Game. Science, 300, 1755-1758.
42.
SamuelsonP. A. (1954). The pure theory of public expenditure. Review of Economics and Statistics, 36, 387-389.
43.
SingerT.SeymourB.O’DohertyJ. P.StephanK. E.DolanR. J.FrithC. D. (2006). Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others. Nature, 439, 466-469.
44.
SingmannH.BolkerB.WestfallJ. (2015). afex: Analysis of Factorial Experiments. R package version 0.13-145. Retrieved from http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=afex
45.
StallenM.SanfeyA. G. (2013). The cooperative brain. The Neuroscientist, 19, 292-303.
46.
StoneE. R.YatesA. J.CaruthersA. S. (2002). Risk taking in decision making for others versus the self. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32, 1797-1824.
47.
TrautmannS. T.VieiderF. M. (2012). Social influences on risk attitudes: Applications in economics. In RoeserS. (Ed.), Handbook of risk theory (pp. 575-600). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
48.
TunneyR. J.ZieglerF. V. (2015). Toward a psychology of surrogate decision making. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 880-885.
49.
van BaarenR. B.HollandR. W.KawakamiK.van KnippenbergA. (2004). Mimicry and prosocial behavior. Psychological Science, 15, 71-74.
50.
von NeumannJ.MorgensternO. (1944). Theory of games and economic behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton.
ZieglerF. V.TunneyR. J. (2012). Decisions for others become less impulsive the further away they are on the family tree. PLoS ONE, 7(11), e49479
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
