Numerous studies over the years have shown that poorer people are often more generous with the money they have than their wealthier peers, but does this also extend to their willingness to cooperate with others? That was the question posed by a recent study from the Max-Planck-Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
The researchers wanted to better understand how cooperation emerges (or doesn’t) in socially diverse groups, with our perception of the willingness of others to cooperate a major factor in our own willingness to avail ourselves to them.
The researchers conducted a number of experiments to explore how our perceptions of the cooperative willingness of others emerge, and how this affects our actual likelihood of cooperating in socially diverse groups, such as those typically found in the workplace.
Conditions for cooperation
The team were particularly keen to explore how our perceptions of the wealth of other people influenced our views on their willingness to cooperate.
Each volunteer played a version of a public good game in which they were asked to secretly decide how much of an endowment they were given they would invest into public good initiatives. This collective pot was then tallied up at the end of the game and divided equally among all of the players.
The results clearly show that inequality plays a role in how willing we believe other people are to cooperate, with volunteers consistently believing that rich peers are more likely to cooperate than poorer peers. What’s more, this belief is consistent among both rich and poor alike.
Indeed, this trend continues for some time, providing of course no further information is available regarding the individuals actual likelihood of cooperating with us. The authors suggest that it’s clear evidence that wealth may be a major driver in our perceptions of the cooperative motivations of others.
The researchers hope that their work will help to give us better insight into how cooperative behaviors emerge in groups, and through this how we can cultivate more productive and cooperative group environments.
