Cognitive Load and Cooperation

Felix Dossing, Marco Piovesan and Erik Wengström

Review of Behavioral Economics, 2017, vol. 4, issue 1, 69-81

Abstract: We study the effect of intuitive and reflective processes on cooperation using cognitive load. Compared with time constraint, which has been used in the previous literature, cognitive load is a more direct way to block reflective processes, and thus a more suitable way to study the link between intuition and cooperation. Using a repeated public goods game, we study the effect of different levels of cognitive load on contributions. We show that a higher cognitive load increases the initial level of cooperation. In particular, subjects are significantly less likely to fully free ride under high cognitive load.

Keywords: Public goods; Cooperation; Cognitive load; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 C90 D03 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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