Does cooperating require the inhibition of selfish urges? Or does “rational” self-interest constrain cooperative impulses? I investigated the role of intuition and deliberation in cooperation by meta-analyzing 67 studies in which cognitive-processing manipulations were applied to economic cooperation games (total N = 17,647; no indication of publication bias using Egger’s test, Begg’s test, or p-curve). My meta-analysis was guided by the social heuristics hypothesis, which proposes that intuition favors behavior that typically maximizes payoffs, whereas deliberation favors behavior that maximizes one’s payoff in the current situation. Therefore, this theory predicts that deliberation will undermine pure cooperation (i.e., cooperation in settings where there are few future consequences for one’s actions, such that cooperating is not in one’s self-interest) but not strategic cooperation (i.e., cooperation in settings where cooperating can maximize one’s payoff). As predicted, the meta-analysis revealed 17.3% more pure cooperation when intuition was promoted over deliberation, but no significant difference in strategic cooperation between more intuitive and more deliberative conditions.
*AchtzigerA.Alós-FerrerC.WagnerA. K. (2016). The impact of self-control depletion on social preferences in the ultimatum game. Journal of Economic Psychology, 53, 1–16.
3.
*AinsworthS. E.BaumeisterR. F.ArielyD.VohsK. D. (2014). Ego depletion decreases trust in economic decision making. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 54, 40–49.
4.
BaumeisterR. F.BratslavskyE.MuravenM.TiceD. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1252–1265.
5.
BearA.RandD. G. (2016). Intuition, deliberation, and the evolution of cooperation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 113, 936–941.
6.
*BonnefonJ.-F.HopfensitzA.De NeysW. (2013). The modular nature of trustworthiness detection. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142, 143–150.
*CappellettiD.GüthW.PlonerM. (2011). Being of two minds: Ultimatum offers under cognitive constraints. Journal of Economic Psychology, 32, 940–950.
9.
*CapraroV. (2016). [Time pressure in the prisoner’s dilemma]. Unpublished raw data.
10.
CapraroV.CococcioniG. (2015). Social setting, intuition and experience in laboratory experiments interact to shape cooperative decision-making. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 282, 20150237. doi:10.1098/rspb.2015.0237
11.
*CapraroV.CococcioniG. (2016). Rethinking spontaneous giving: Extreme time pressure and ego-depletion favour self-regarding reactions. Scientific Reports, 6, Article 27219. doi:10.1038/srep27219
12.
ChandlerJ.PaolacciG.PeerE.MuellerP.RatliffK. A. (2015). Using nonnaive participants can reduce effect sizes. Psychological Science, 26, 1131–1139.
13.
ChudekM.HenrichJ. (2011). Culture–gene coevolution, norm-psychology and the emergence of human prosociality. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15, 218–226.
14.
*ConeJ.RandD. G. (2014). Time pressure increases cooperation in competitively framed social dilemmas. PLoS ONE, 9(12), Article e115756. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0115756
15.
*De DreuC. K. W.DusselB.Ten VeldenF. S. (2015). In intergroup conflict, self-sacrifice is stronger among pro-social individuals and parochial altruism emerges specially among cognitively taxed individuals. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, Article 572. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00572
16.
*de HaanT.van VeldhuizenR. (2015). Willpower depletion and framing effects. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 117, 47–61.
17.
DeVoeS. E.HouseJ. (in press). Replications with MTurkers who are naïve versus experienced with academic studies: A comment on Connors, Khamitov, Moroz, Campbell, and Henderson (2015). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
18.
*DøssingF.PiovesanM.WengstromE. (2015). Cognitive load and cooperation. Manuscript in preparation, Department of Economics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
19.
*DuffyS.SmithJ. (2014). Cognitive load in the multi-player prisoner’s dilemma game: Are there brains in games?Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 51, 47–56.
20.
EvansA. M.DillonK. D.RandD. G. (2015). Fast but not intuitive, slow but not reflective: Decision conflict drives reaction times in social dilemmas. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144, 951–966.
21.
GilbertD. T.PelhamB. W.KrullD. S. (1988). On cognitive busyness: When person perceivers meet persons perceived. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 733–740.
22.
GilovichT.GriffinD. W.KahnemanD. (Eds.). (2002). Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
23.
HaggerM. S.ChatzisarantisN. L. D.AlbertsH.AnggonoC. O.BataillerC.BirtA.. . . ZwienenbergM. (in press). A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science.
24.
*HalaliE.Bereby-MeyerY.MeiranN. (2014). Between self-interest and reciprocity: The social bright side of self-control failure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 745–754.
25.
*HalaliE.Bereby-MeyerY.OckenfelsA. (2013). Is it all about the self? The effect of self-control depletion on ultimatum game proposers. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, Article 240. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2013.00240
26.
HenrichJ.HeineS. J.NorenzayanA. (2010). The weirdest people in the world?Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 33, 61–83.
27.
InzlichtM.SchmeichelB. J. (2012). What is ego depletion? Toward a mechanistic revision of the resource model of self-control. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 450–463.
28.
KiyonariT.TanidaS.YamagishiT. (2000). Social exchange and reciprocity: Confusion or a heuristic?Evolution & Human Behavior, 21, 411–427.
29.
KrajbichI.BartlingB.HareT.FehrE. (2015). Rethinking fast and slow based on a critique of reaction-time reverse inference. Nature Communications, 6, Article 7455. doi:10.1038/ncomms8455
30.
*LevineE.BaraschA.RandD.BermanJ.SmallD. (2016). [Intuition induction in the prisoner’s dilemma]. Unpublished raw data.
31.
*LiuC.HaoF. (2011). An application of a dual-process approach to decision making in social dilemmas. American Journal of Psychology, 124, 203–212.
32.
*LohseJ. (in press). Smart or selfish—When smart guys finish nice. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics.
33.
*LotzS. (2015). Spontaneous giving under structural inequality: Intuition promotes cooperation in asymmetric social dilemmas. PLoS ONE, 10(7), Article e0131562. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0131562
34.
*MaY.LiuY.RandD. G.HeathertonT. F.HanS. (2015). Opposing oxytocin effects on intergroup cooperative behavior in intuitive and reflective minds. Neuropsychopharmacology, 40, 2379–2387.
35.
*MontealegreA.Jimenez-LealW. (2015). The role of trust in the Social Heuristic Hypothesis. Manuscript in preparation, Department of Economics, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.
36.
*MorewedgeC. K.KrishnamurtiT.ArielyD. (2014). Focused on fairness: Alcohol intoxication increases the costly rejection of inequitable rewards. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 50, 15–20.
37.
*NeoW. S.YuM.WeberR. A.GonzalezC. (2013). The effects of time delay in reciprocity games. Journal of Economic Psychology, 34, 20–35.
38.
PeysakhovichA.NowakM. A.RandD. G. (2014). Humans display a ‘cooperative phenotype’ that is domain general and temporally stable. Nature Communications, 5, Article 4939. doi:10.1038/ncomms5939
39.
*ProtzkoJ.OuimetteB.SchoolerJ. (2016). Believing there is no free will corrupts intuitive cooperation. Cognition, 151, 6–9.
40.
RandD. G.BrescollV. L.EverettJ. A. C.CapraroV.BarceloH. (2016). Social heuristics and social roles: Intuition favors altruism for women but not for men. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 389–396.
41.
RandD. G.DreberA.EllingsenT.FudenbergD.NowakM. A. (2009). Positive interactions promote public cooperation. Science, 325, 1272–1275.
42.
*RandD. G.GreeneJ. D.NowakM. A. (2012). Spontaneous giving and calculated greed. Nature, 489, 427–430.
43.
*RandD. G.Kraft-ToddG. T. (2014). Reflection does not undermine self-interested prosociality. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 8, Article 300. doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00300
44.
*RandD. G.NewmanG. E.WurzbacherO. (2015). Social context and the dynamics of cooperative choice. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 28, 159–166.
45.
RandD. G.NowakM. A. (2013). Human cooperation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17, 413–425.
46.
*RandD. G.PeysakhovichA.Kraft-ToddG. T.NewmanG. E.WurzbacherO.NowakM. A.GreenJ. D. (2014). Social heuristics shape intuitive cooperation. Nature Communications, 5, Article 3677. doi:10.1038/ncomms4677
47.
*RantapuskaE.FreeseR.JääskeläinenI.HytönenK. (2014). Trust your gut: Hunger increases trust and trustworthiness. Manuscript in preparation, Department of Finance, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland.
48.
RecaldeM. P.RiedlA.VesterlundL. (2014). Error prone inference from response time: The case of intuitive generosity. Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2507723
49.
RobertsM. E.StewartB. M.TingleyD.LucasC.Leder-LuisJ.AlbertsonB.. . . RandD. G. (2014). Structural topic models for open-ended survey responses. American Journal of Political Science, 58, 1064–1082.
50.
RubinsteinA. (2007). Instinctive and cognitive reasoning: A study of response times. The Economic Journal, 117, 1243–1259.
51.
*SamsonK.KostyszynP. (2015). Effects of cognitive load on trusting behavior: An experiment using the trust game. PLoS ONE, 10(5), Article e0127680. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127680
52.
ShenhavA.RandD. G.GreeneJ. D. (2012). Divine intuition: Cognitive style influences belief in God. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141, 423–428.
53.
SimonsohnU.NelsonL. D.SimmonsJ. P. (2014). P-curve: A key to the file-drawer. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 534–547.
54.
SlomanS. A. (1996). The empirical case for two systems of reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 3–22.
55.
StrømlandE.TjøttaS.TorsvikG. (2016). Cooperating, fast and slow: Testing the social heuristics hypothesis. Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2780877
56.
*SutterM.KocherM.StraubS. (2003). Bargaining under time pressure in an experimental ultimatum game. Economics Letters, 81, 341–347.
TomaselloM.MelisA. P.TennieC.WymanE.HerrmannE. (2012). Two key steps in the evolution of human cooperation. Current Anthropology, 53, 673–692.
59.
ToobyJ.CosmidesL. (1990). The past explains the present: Emotional adaptations and the structure of ancestral environments. Ethology and Sociobiology, 11, 375–424.
60.
*UrbigD.TerjesenS.ProcherV.MuehlfeldK.van WitteloostuijnA. (2015). Come on and take a free ride: Contributing to public goods in native and foreign language settings. Academy of Management Learning & Education. Advance online publication. doi:10.5465/amle.2014.0338
61.
Van DijkE.de KwaadstenietE. W.De CremerD. (2009). Tacit coordination in social dilemmas: The importance of having a common understanding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 665–678.
62.
Van LangeP. A. M.De BruinE.OttenW.JoiremanJ. A. (1997). Development of prosocial, individualistic, and competitive orientations: Theory and preliminary evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 733–746.
63.
*VerkoeijenP. P. J. L.BouwmeesterS. (2014). Does intuition cause cooperation?PLoS ONE, 9(5), Article e96654. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0096654
64.
*WangY.MaY.HanH.RandD. G. (2015). [Intuition induction in the public-goods game]. Unpublished raw data.
65.
WrightP. (1974). The harassed decision maker: Time pressures, distractions, and the use of evidence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 59, 555–561.
66.
YamagishiT.HoritaY.MifuneN.HashimotoH.LiY.ShinadaM.. . . SimunovicD. (2012). Rejection of unfair offers in the ultimatum game is no evidence of strong reciprocity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 109, 20364–20368. doi:10.1073/pnas.1212126109
67.
YamagishiT.MifuneN.LiY.ShinadaM.HashimotoH.HoritaY.. . . SimunovicD. (2013). Is behavioral pro-sociality game-specific? Pro-social preference and expectations of pro-sociality. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 120, 260–271.
68.
ZakiJ.MitchellJ. P. (2013). Intuitive prosociality. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 466–470.
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.
