Contingent social utility in the prisoners' dilemma

We examined a central assumption of recent theories: that social utility is contingent on impressions of other people. We manipulated participants' im pression of the other player in a prisoners dilemma. We then measured parti cipants' own preferences in the PD, their estimates of the other players pr eferences in the PD, their prediction of the other player's move, and their own move. We hypothesized that the participants' move would maximize their stated preferences, given their pre diction of the other players move, and that participants' preferences would be contingent on their impression of the other player. Results supported both hypotheses and revealed that parti cipants' preferences were contingent more on their estimate of the other pl ayers preferences than on their prediction of the other players move. (C) 2 001 Elsevier Science B.V, All rights reserved.