Superiority of Vicarious over Direct Experience in Interpersonal Conflict Resolution

Abstract

In order to compare the effects of direct versus vicarious experience in conflict resolution, an actor-subject played a Prisoner's Dilemma game, while an observer-subject observed his responses and their consequences. Each then played a subsequent, private test game against a new opponent. In all three games, the simulated opponents played a tit-for-tat strategy which reinforces cooperation and punishes competition. Thus, the proportion of cooperative responses made is a measure of how frequently the subject produced the reinforced response. Observers tend to respond more cooperatively than actors in the test game, particularly if the first game was marked by high degrees of mutual competition. The results were explained by assuming that an actor is more highly motivated than an observer and has greater difficulty acquiring a new response. A speculative attribution theoretical account was offered to explain this effect The findings demonstrate that vicarious experience (observing) is superior to direct experience (participating) for the production of appropriate responses for reduction of interpersonal conflict.