The Influence and Mechanism of Social Value Orientation on Cooperative Behavior in Gift Exchange Game

This study uses a newly developed game theoretic model to explore the effects and mechanisms of cooperation indicators such as interpersonal trust, social preferences, and social value orientations on cooperative behavior, and we develop a psychologically grounded model of trust-based cooperation. Research on cooperation in gift choice games has focused on the extent to which it promotes noncooperative choices, which derive exclusively from the payoff structure of the game. However, this approach does not clearly explain the psychological mechanisms of why the game’s payoffs affect the rate of cooperation. In trust-based cooperation, we show how simple decision models predict the emergence of expected utility maximizing strategies when both individual social preferences and positive expectations are considered. In addition, we show the relationship between these predictions and the game cooperation indexes. Finally, we describe the conditions under which trust-based cooperation is justified and how the decision to trust can be understood through the interplay between payoffs, preferences, and beliefs.