Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Hungary.
Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Hungary; Philosophy Department, University of Warwick, United Kingdom.
Cognition. 2018 May;174:37-42. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.01.012. Epub 2018 Feb 3.
Can the perception that one's partner is investing effort generate a sense of commitment to a joint action? To test this, we developed a 2-player version of the classic snake game which became increasingly boring over the course of each round. This enabled us to operationalize commitment in terms of how long participants persisted before pressing a 'finish' button to conclude each round. Our results from three experiments reveal that participants persisted longer when they perceived what they believed to be cues of their partner's effortful contribution (Experiment 1). Crucially, this effect was not observed when they knew their partner to be an algorithm (Experiment 2), nor when it was their own effort that had been invested (Experiment 3). These results support the hypothesis that the perception of a partner's effort elicits a sense of commitment, leading to increased persistence in the face of a temptation to disengage.
人们是否会因为认为伴侣付出了努力而对共同行为产生承诺感？为了检验这一点，我们开发了一个经典蛇游戏的 2 人版本，在每一轮中，游戏会变得越来越无聊。这使我们能够根据参与者在按下“结束”按钮以结束每一轮之前坚持的时间来对承诺进行操作化。我们在三个实验中的结果表明，当参与者感知到他们认为是伴侣努力贡献的线索时，他们会坚持更长时间（实验 1）。至关重要的是，当他们知道他们的伴侣是一个算法时，这种效果并不明显（实验 2），当投入的是他们自己的努力时，这种效果也不明显（实验 3）。这些结果支持了这样一种假设，即伴侣努力的感知会引起承诺感，从而在面对退出的诱惑时增加坚持度。
