Why Do Cooperators Cooperate?: Efficacy as a Moderator of Social Motive Effects

Two alternative explanations for the effect of social motives on cooperation in social dilemmas were identified. One explanation (a transformation explanation) suggests that those with more cooperative social motives attach greater weight to others’ outcomes. The other explanation (a moral explanation) suggests that those with more cooperative social motives are generally more concerned with acting in a morally-prescribed fashion. The transformation explanation predicts that social motive effects should be moderated by the efficacy of cooperation; the moral explanation predicts no such moderating effect. An experiment that tested these competing predictions is reported. Its results supported a dual-process model—the transformation explanation holds under conditions where it is unclear whether or not cooperation is morally prescribed (e.g., when there had been no prior discussion of the dilemma), whereas the moral explanation holds under conditions where it is clearer that to cooperate is to ‘do the right thing’ (e.g. following group discussion of the dilemma).