Patience Predicts Within-Group Cooperation in an Ingroup Bias-Free Way

Abstract

Patience — low delay discounting — has been shown to predict cooperative behavior in environments where cooperation demands the suppression of competitive aspirations. But what about intergroup-conflict situations, where within-group cooperation is importantly motivated by competitive sentiments against other groups? We analyze the connection between delay discounting and performance in two problem-solving tasks with either individual or intergroup competition incentives. We find a positive relationship between a group’s mean patience and the within-group cooperative synergy, defined as the group members’ performance in the intergroup-competition task relative to their performance in the individual task. Furthermore, ingroup bias cannot account for this result: in a follow-up social preferences task, patience relates positively (negatively) to cooperative (competitive) choices toward unknown students but not toward ingroup members. However, more patient individuals were more willing to reduce the benefits of their uncooperative group partners and increase the benefits of the cooperative ones in a reciprocal manner.