Assumed similarity in personality traits has a short-lived positive effect on cooperation in absence of reciprocity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Social dilemmas employing finitely repeated public goods games are usually employed to study individual cooperation and free-riding. It remains unclear whether and to what extent cooperation in teams is motivated by the assumed similarity of personality traits of other players. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of sharing information on personality traits in a voluntary contribution mechanism game environment, which includes a punishment mechanism, on individual contributions to a public good. These factors are integrated into a game setting that incorporates various group sizes embedded in a survey. In addition, the participants in this study were selected from the general population of the United Arab Emirates. Results show that, on average, respondents were positively affected by the similar personality traits treatment in the first round soon after the treatment.