The double meaning of a single act: Influences of the perceiver and the perceived on cooperative behaviour

The present research examines how a single behaviour that is informative of bath the morality and intelligence of a person influences impressions, deg ree of cooperative behaviour expected from that person, and degree of coope rative behaviour displayed toward that person in a mixed-motive interdepend ence situation (i.e., a social dilemma). Furthermore, it is investigated ho w individual differences in social value orientation influence these proces ses. Participants were provided with behavioural information that could be construed in terms of both morality (high/low) and intelligence (high/low). Consistent with the morality-importance hypothesis, participants assigned gr eater weight to morality than to intelligence aspects of the information . Congruent with the social value orientation hypothesis (i) only proselfs and not prosocials expected more cooperation from unintelligent than from i ntelligent others, and (ii) prosocials attended more strongly to morality a spects than proselfs in deciding on own cooperation. Finally, consistent wi th the relative benefit hypothesis, people overall expected more cooperatio n than they were willing to display, and this tendency was especially prono unced with others described by moral/unintelligent behaviour, and for peopl e with a proself value orientation. The authors discuss a model describing influences of the perceiver and the perceived on cooperative behaviour. Cop yright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.