ABSTRACT
About 20 years ago, Dawes, McTavish, and Shaklee (1977) observed in their social dilemma studies that participants not only adapted cooperative decisions according to their assumptions about other people’s behavior, but also reacted very emotionally to others’ choices. This was especially true when the other people were acting uncooperatively. The authors took this as evidence that participants were very involved in the games, despite the fact that monetary incentives were rather small. However, a more thorough analysis of such affective reactions and their possible influences on cooperative decisions was postponed for several years.
