Experimental evidence of selective inattention in reputation-based cooperation

Reputation-based cooperation is often observed in modern society. People gain several types of information by assessing others. Among these, the most important information is the actions of people and those of their recipients. However, almost all studies assume that people consider all of the information they receive. This assumption is extreme, and people engaging in reputation-based cooperation may not pay attention to some information, i.e., they may display selective inattention. We demonstrate that subjects’ decision-making in relation to cooperative action depends on the content of the information they receive about their recipients. Our results show that subjects either consider or ignore information depending on the content of that information. When their recipients had cooperated previously, subjects cooperated without considering the information they received. When the recipients had played before with those who had bad reputations, subjects did not use that information, regardless of whether it was disclosed proactively. In other cases, subjects considered information on both the previous actions of recipients and those of the recipients’ own recipients. We found that subjects did not always use the information to make decisions, although they willingly received information about their recipients. This supports the proposition that selective inattention occurs in reputation-based cooperation.