Cargando…
Cognitive load decreases cooperation and moral punishment in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with punishment option
The present study serves to test whether cooperation and moral punishment are affected by cognitive load. Dual-process theories postulate that moral behavior is intuitive which leads to the prediction that cooperation and moral punishment should remain unaffected or may even increase when cognitive...
Autores principales: | , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8718526/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34969946 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-04217-4 |
_version_ | 1784624747422679040 |
---|---|
author | Mieth, Laura Buchner, Axel Bell, Raoul |
author_facet | Mieth, Laura Buchner, Axel Bell, Raoul |
author_sort | Mieth, Laura |
collection | PubMed |
description | The present study serves to test whether cooperation and moral punishment are affected by cognitive load. Dual-process theories postulate that moral behavior is intuitive which leads to the prediction that cooperation and moral punishment should remain unaffected or may even increase when cognitive load is induced by a secondary task. However, it has also been proposed that cognitive control and deliberation are necessary to choose an economically costly but morally justified option. A third perspective implies that the effects of cognitive load may depend on the specific processes involved in social dilemmas. In the present study, participants played a simultaneous Prisoner’s Dilemma game with a punishment option. First, both players decided to cooperate or defect. Then they had the opportunity to punish the partners. In the cognitive-load group, cognitive load was induced by a continuous tone classification task while the no-load group had no distractor task. Under cognitive load, cooperation and moral punishment decreased in comparison to the no-load condition. By contrast, hypocritical and antisocial punishment were not influenced by the dual-task manipulation. Increased cognitive load was associated with a bias to punish the partners irrespective of the outcome of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, suggesting that punishment was applied less purposefully in the cognitive-load condition. The present findings are thus in line with the idea that the availability of cognitive resources does not always have a suppressive effect on moral behaviors, but can have facilitating effects on cooperation and moral punishment. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8718526 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87185262022-01-05 Cognitive load decreases cooperation and moral punishment in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with punishment option Mieth, Laura Buchner, Axel Bell, Raoul Sci Rep Article The present study serves to test whether cooperation and moral punishment are affected by cognitive load. Dual-process theories postulate that moral behavior is intuitive which leads to the prediction that cooperation and moral punishment should remain unaffected or may even increase when cognitive load is induced by a secondary task. However, it has also been proposed that cognitive control and deliberation are necessary to choose an economically costly but morally justified option. A third perspective implies that the effects of cognitive load may depend on the specific processes involved in social dilemmas. In the present study, participants played a simultaneous Prisoner’s Dilemma game with a punishment option. First, both players decided to cooperate or defect. Then they had the opportunity to punish the partners. In the cognitive-load group, cognitive load was induced by a continuous tone classification task while the no-load group had no distractor task. Under cognitive load, cooperation and moral punishment decreased in comparison to the no-load condition. By contrast, hypocritical and antisocial punishment were not influenced by the dual-task manipulation. Increased cognitive load was associated with a bias to punish the partners irrespective of the outcome of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, suggesting that punishment was applied less purposefully in the cognitive-load condition. The present findings are thus in line with the idea that the availability of cognitive resources does not always have a suppressive effect on moral behaviors, but can have facilitating effects on cooperation and moral punishment. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-12-30 /pmc/articles/PMC8718526/ /pubmed/34969946 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-04217-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Mieth, Laura Buchner, Axel Bell, Raoul Cognitive load decreases cooperation and moral punishment in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with punishment option |
title | Cognitive load decreases cooperation and moral punishment in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with punishment option |
title_full | Cognitive load decreases cooperation and moral punishment in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with punishment option |
title_fullStr | Cognitive load decreases cooperation and moral punishment in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with punishment option |
title_full_unstemmed | Cognitive load decreases cooperation and moral punishment in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with punishment option |
title_short | Cognitive load decreases cooperation and moral punishment in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with punishment option |
title_sort | cognitive load decreases cooperation and moral punishment in a prisoner’s dilemma game with punishment option |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8718526/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34969946 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-04217-4 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT miethlaura cognitiveloaddecreasescooperationandmoralpunishmentinaprisonersdilemmagamewithpunishmentoption AT buchneraxel cognitiveloaddecreasescooperationandmoralpunishmentinaprisonersdilemmagamewithpunishmentoption AT bellraoul cognitiveloaddecreasescooperationandmoralpunishmentinaprisonersdilemmagamewithpunishmentoption |