Cooperative Behavior in Dyads

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Abstract
It was hypothesized that cooperative behavior would decrease over time in an interaction between cooperatively oriented and competitively oriented persons. Pairs of male undergraduates, in which one S was induced to assume a competitive orientation and the other a cooperative one, played thirty trials of a Prisoner's Dilemma game. Three experimental conditions were created by varying the nature of the information each S received about his partner's orientation. A decrease in the amount of cooperative behavior was found only when Ss believed that their (dissimilarly motivated) partner had the same orientation as themselves. When subjects had veridical information about their partner's dissimilar orientation, there was a significant increase in the amount of cooperative behavior over time for both pair members. When Ss had no mformation about their partner's goal orientation, cooperative behavior remained stable over time. The data were discussed in terms of the active versus passive role taken by subjects in transforming interpersonal situations which they confront.

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