Are You Signaling a Desire to Cooperate?

Emma Levine, Alixandra Barasch, David Rand, Jonathan Berman, and Deborah Small have published an interesting new paper titled, "Signaling emotion and reason in cooperation," in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.  They conducted a series of experiments to examine how people decide whether to cooperate with another individual.   The experiments used two-player prisoner dilemma games to examine what might cause someone to be more or less cooperative with another party.   Their findings identify an interesting distinction between emotional and rational cues.  Here's an excerpt from NYU Stern's concise summary of the article: 

The experiments revealed that people infer that emotional actors are more likely to be prosocial, or altruistic, than rational actors. That is, people assume that individuals who make their decisions emotionally are more likely to cooperate, and then respond accordingly by cooperating more with them. “We find that people associate one’s reliance on emotion with prosocial motivations and feelings such as empathy and compassion, rather than selfish emotions, such as greed,” says Professor Barasch.

In addition, reaction to these signals depends on how people themselves make decisions. While people who rely on emotion themselves are quite responsive to signals of emotion and reason, people who rely on reason do not respond as strongly to these cues, instead making their decision to cooperate through calculated self-interest. “We show that people see emotion as a signal of cooperation, and will cooperate more with individuals who make their decisions emotionally. However, signals like this are less important to people who make their own decisions using reason – they cooperate less overall, and are not responsive to these social cues.”

The study has important implications as we work on new teams or with new partners on a project or initiative.   We not only need to be aware of the cues that we are emitting, but we must understand how others make decisions.  Are they more rational or emotional? What does that mean for our ability to engage in cooperative behavior?   Naturally, we also need to be careful not to put ourselves in a precarious position, where others might try to take advantage of our altruism.   Finally, we need to think carefully about our own behaviors that might suggest a powerful desire to pursue self-interests.  Those cues might harm our ability to elicit cooperation from the very people we need to work with to achieve our personal goals as well as the broader organizational objectives.  

The Irrational Desire to Complete a Set of Tasks, Purchases, etc.

Kate Barasz, Leslie John, Elizabeth Keenan, and Michael Norton have completed a new study demonstrating that people have an irrational desire/need to complete sets of tasks, purchases, assignments, etc. Barasz says, "People really don't like to leave things incomplete." HBS Working Knowledge describes the implications of their research: 

  

Do you want customers to refer more of their friends to your company’s website? Ask them to refer friends in arbitrary “batches” of five at a time. Looking to increase charitable giving to your nonprofit organization? Ask potential donors to contribute a set of six gifts. Are you and your fiancé struggling to write thank-you cards for all those wedding shower gifts? Try batching the unwritten cards into sets of eight. Rather than feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of writing one note at a time, you’ll feel oddly motivated to finish a whole set at a time.

In one study, the scholars conducted a field experiment with the Canadian Red Cross.  They tested three types of donation request with more than 7,000 donors during the Christmas season in 2016.  One group of donors received a request for cash donations.   A second group received a request to donate so as to fund the giving of particular items to people in different spots around the globe.  A location marker on a visual of the globe indicated where their money was funding a particular item. The third group of donors received a request to donate funds for a "Global Survival Kit" of six items. As they donated each item, a line stretched further around the globe, going around the entire earth if all six items were funded. The prospective donors did not have to donate all six items.  They could choose to donate a single item if they wished.  Barasz notes, “Who wants to donate six blankets, when you can donate one blanket and feel just as good? But, if you frame it as a set, then there is a reason to want to complete the set and to donate all six of the items.”

What did they find? 21% of the people in the third group chose to donate all six items. That was more than 4 times as many people donating as compared to the second group, and 7 times as many people donating as compared to the first group.  In short, framing the decision as a set to be completed has a substantial impact on donor behavior.  Presumably, the same type of framing may have a significant impact on customer or employee behavior.   It may not seem rational to be compelled to complete a set, but that's the way many individuals feel.