Evaluating the role of personality trait information in social dilemmas

Abstract

We investigate whether cooperative behavior in social dilemmas is conditional on information about a partner's personality traits. Using a repeated one-shot continuous strategy Prisoner's Dilemma (two person Public Goods game), we test how information on personality traits of partners influences cooperative actions. Before each game we provide subjects with the rank-order of their partner (relative to all subjects in the session) on one of the personality traits of the Big Five Inventory. Using a within-subjects design we find that subjects are more cooperative when informed that their partner is more ‘Agreeable’ or ‘Open to Experience’. The primary reason for more cooperative behavior is the expectation that partners will give more to the public good.