The role of facial cues in signalling cooperativeness is limited and nuanced
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
Standard
In: Scientific Reports, Vol. 14, No. 1, 22009, 12.2024.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - The role of facial cues in signalling cooperativeness is limited and nuanced
AU - Lohse, Johannes
AU - Sanches Pages, Santiago
AU - Turiegano , Enrique
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2024.
PY - 2024/12
Y1 - 2024/12
N2 - Humans display a remarkable tendency to cooperate with strangers; however, identifying prospective cooperation partners accurately before entering any new relationship is essential to mitigate the risk of being exploited. Visual appearance, as inferrable, for example, from facial images on job portals and dating sites, may serve as a potential signal of cooperativeness. This experimental study examines whether static images enable the correct detection of an individual’s propensity to cooperate. Participants first played the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game, a standard cooperation task. Subsequently, they were asked to predict the cooperativeness of participants from a prior PD study relying solely on their static facial photographs. While our main results indicate only marginal accuracy improvements over random guessing, a more detailed analysis reveals that participants were more successful at identifying cooperative tendencies similar to their own. Despite no detectable main effect in our primary treatment variations (time pressure versus time delay), participants exhibited increased accuracy in identifying male cooperators under time pressure. These findings point towards a limited yet nuanced role of static facial images in predicting cooperativeness, advancing our understanding of non-behavioral cues in cooperative interactions.
AB - Humans display a remarkable tendency to cooperate with strangers; however, identifying prospective cooperation partners accurately before entering any new relationship is essential to mitigate the risk of being exploited. Visual appearance, as inferrable, for example, from facial images on job portals and dating sites, may serve as a potential signal of cooperativeness. This experimental study examines whether static images enable the correct detection of an individual’s propensity to cooperate. Participants first played the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game, a standard cooperation task. Subsequently, they were asked to predict the cooperativeness of participants from a prior PD study relying solely on their static facial photographs. While our main results indicate only marginal accuracy improvements over random guessing, a more detailed analysis reveals that participants were more successful at identifying cooperative tendencies similar to their own. Despite no detectable main effect in our primary treatment variations (time pressure versus time delay), participants exhibited increased accuracy in identifying male cooperators under time pressure. These findings point towards a limited yet nuanced role of static facial images in predicting cooperativeness, advancing our understanding of non-behavioral cues in cooperative interactions.
KW - Economics
KW - cooperation
KW - facial images
KW - Predictability
KW - signaling
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85204884095&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/971843eb-e88c-3ca9-ba28-052aafbde3c9/
U2 - 10.1038/s41598-024-71685-9
DO - 10.1038/s41598-024-71685-9
M3 - Journal articles
C2 - 39317718
VL - 14
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
SN - 2045-2322
IS - 1
M1 - 22009
ER -