Reward, Competition, and Social Neuroscience Lab, Department of Psychology, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Xianlin Avenue 163, Nanjing, 210023, China.
Department of Radiology, The Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China.
Sci Rep. 2023 Apr 4;13(1):5535. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-32523-6.
There is growing evidence that risky cooperation is regulated by the experience of previous interactions with others. However, it is unclear how the evaluation of outcomes from competitive interactions can affect individuals' subsequent cooperative behavior. To address this issue, we examined how participants cooperated with a partner having just competed with them. While competing, participants (N = 164) were randomly assigned to receive one of four types of outcome feedback regarding their performance (victory vs. defeat vs. uncertain vs. no competition (control)). We found that both the experience of defeats and of uncertainty as competitive outcomes exerted a negative impact on the extent to which participants then engaged in cooperative behavior with their recent opponents. This only occurred when such subsequent cooperative behavior involved a high potential for incurring personal costs but not when there was no risk of incurring personal costs and a positive return. Finally, mediation analysis revealed that the effect of defeat was mediated by participants' level of interpersonal trust and the extent to which participants were willing to cooperate, while the effect of the uncertain competitive outcome was mediated only by the extent to which participants were willing to cooperate. These findings offer novel insights into how risky cooperation is modulated by previous competition.
越来越多的证据表明，冒险合作受到与他人先前互动经历的调节。然而，目前尚不清楚竞争互动的结果评估如何影响个体随后的合作行为。为了解决这个问题，我们研究了参与者与刚刚与他们竞争过的伙伴合作的情况。在竞争过程中，参与者（N=164）被随机分配接受四种关于他们表现的结果反馈类型之一（胜利对失败对不确定对无竞争（对照））。我们发现，竞争结果的失败和不确定性经验都对参与者随后与最近的对手进行合作行为的程度产生了负面影响。只有当这种后续合作行为涉及到高个人成本风险且没有个人成本风险和积极回报时，才会发生这种情况。最后，中介分析表明，失败的影响是由参与者的人际信任水平和合作意愿程度介导的，而不确定的竞争结果的影响仅由参与者的合作意愿程度介导。这些发现为先前竞争如何调节冒险合作提供了新的见解。
