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Intuition and cooperation reconsidered

Nature volume 498, pages E1–E2 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Arising from D. G. Rand, J. D. Greene & M. A. Nowak Nature 489, 427–430 (2012)

Rand et al.1 reported increased cooperation in social dilemmas after forcing individuals to decide quickly1. Time pressure was used to induce intuitive decisions, and they concluded that intuition promotes cooperation. We test the robustness of this finding in a series of five experiments involving about 2,500 subjects in three countries. None of the experiments confirms the Rand et al.1 finding, indicating that their result was an artefact of excluding the about 50% of subjects who failed to respond on time.

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Figure 1: Time pressure does not increase cooperation in social dilemmas.

References

  1. Rand, D. G., Greene, J. D. & Nowak, M. A. Spontaneous giving and calculated greed. Nature 489, 427–430 (2012)

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  2. Camerer, C. F. Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction (Princeton Univ. Press, 2003)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Economics, Department for Management and Engineering, Linköping University, SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden,

    Gustav Tinghög, David Andersson, Camilla Josephson & Magnus Johannesson

  2. Department of Medical and Health Sciences, The National Center for Priority Setting in Health Care, Linköping University, SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden,

    Gustav Tinghög

  3. Department of Banking and Finance, University of Innsbruck, Universitätsstrasse 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria,

    Caroline Bonn & Michael Kirchler

  4. Klarna AB, Norra Stationsgatan 61, SE-113 43 Stockholm, Sweden,

    Harald Böttiger

  5. Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics, Box 6501, SE-113 83 Stockholm, Sweden,

    Gustaf Lundgren & Magnus Johannesson

  6. Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden,

    Daniel Västfjäll

  7. Decision Research, 1201 Oak Street, Suite 200, Eugene, Oregon 97401, USA,

    Daniel Västfjäll

  8. Department of Economics, Centre for Finance, University of Gothenburg, Box 600, SE-40530 Göteborg, Sweden,

    Michael Kirchler

Authors
  1. Gustav Tinghög
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  2. David Andersson
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  3. Caroline Bonn
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  4. Harald Böttiger
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  5. Camilla Josephson
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  6. Gustaf Lundgren
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  7. Daniel Västfjäll
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  8. Michael Kirchler
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  9. Magnus Johannesson
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Contributions

G.T. and M.J. designed research; all authors performed research; D.A. analysed data; G.T., M.K. and M.J. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Magnus Johannesson.

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Tinghög, G., Andersson, D., Bonn, C. et al. Intuition and cooperation reconsidered. Nature 498, E1–E2 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12194

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