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The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
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A Dual-Edged Sword: Empathy and Collective Action in the Prisoner's Dilemma

John A. Sautter

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Levente Littvay

Central European University in Budapest, Hungary

Brennen Bearnes

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Researchers guided by evolutionary psychology have theorized that in an iterated prisoner's dilemma, reciprocal behavior is a product of evolutionary design, where individuals are guided by an innate sense of fairness for equal outcomes. Empathy as a prosocial emotion could be a key to understanding the psychological underpinnings of why and who tends to cooperate in a collective act. In short, why are some individuals more prone to participate in collective action? The authors test the hypothesis that a prosocial psychological disposition, stemming from self-reported empathy, will lead to group-oriented behavior in an iterated prisoner's dilemma game. Results suggest that an empathetic disposition does not lead to a higher rate of cooperation but interacts with environmental conditioning to produce either a highly cooperative or highly uncooperative personality type.

Key Words: collective action • egalitarian outcomes • empathy • evolutionary psychology • phenotypic variation • prisoner's dilemma

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 614, No. 1, 154-171 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0002716207306360
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