Happiness and Cooperation

Eugenio Proto, Daniel Sgroi and Mahnaz Nazneen
Additional contact information
Mahnaz Nazneen: University of Warwick

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: According to existing research across several disciplines (management, psychology, economics and neuroscience), positive mood can have positive effects, engendering more altruistic, open and helpful behaviour, but can also work though a more negative channel by inducing inward-orientation, assertiveness, and reduced use of information. This leaves the impact on cooperation in interactive and strategic situations unclear. We find evidence from 490 participants in a laboratory experiment suggesting that participants in an induced positive mood cooperate less in a repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma than participants in a neutral setting. This is robust to the number of repetitions or the inclusion of pre-play communication. In order to understand why positive mood might damage the propensity to cooperate, we conduct a language analysis of the pre-play communication between players. This analysis indicates that subjects in a more positive mood use more inward-oriented and more negative language which supports the negative channel.

Keywords: positive mood; affect; happiness; mood induction procedures; co-operation; repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma; social preferences; social dilemmas; cognitive skills; productivity; inward-orientation; language analysis JEL Classification: C72 (cooperative games); C91 (laboratory experiments); D91 (role and effects of psychological; emotional; social; and cognitive factors on decision making); J24 (productivity); J28 (life satisfaction) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-exp, nep-neu and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/c ... to_sgroi_nazneen.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cge:wacage:347

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jane Snape ().