Patience is a virtue: Cooperative people have lower discount rates -'08
Abstract
Reciprocal altruism involves foregoing an immediate benefit for the sake of a greater long-term reward. It follows that individuals who exhibit a stronger preference for future over immediate rewards should be more disposed to engage in reciprocal altruism – in other words, ‘patient’ people should be more cooperative. The present study tested this prediction by investigating whether participants’ contributions in a public-good game correlated with their ‘discount rate’. The hypothesis was supported: patient people are indeed more cooperative. The paper discusses alternative interpretations of this result, and makes some suggestions for future research.
3 comments:
I like this idea that there could be a common thread behind patience and co-operative behaviour. Conscientiouness could be the common thread, if one argued that patience is about being conscientious to one's future self?
I like this idea that there could be a common thread behind patience and co-operative behaviour. Conscientiouness could be the common thread, if one argued that patience is about being conscientious to one's future self?
Though it could also be argued that there is nothing conscientious about behaving in a calculatedly co-operative fashion to reap the greater mutual benefits of co-operation...
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