From low- to high-cost cooperation: Increasing costly cooperation behavior through internalized low-cost prosociality

The question how to increase cooperation behavior to encounter current societal challenges is an ongoing research endeavor in several empirical disciplines, such as behavioral economics, social psychology and beyond.

Classic nudging approaches modify the situation in a way that the decision maker is slightly influenced in her decision, though maintains complete freedom of choice, as is the case when modifying the default. This comes at the downside, however, that in ultimate consequence, every decision would need to be nudged.

In SoMicoop, I present a new and generalized approach, focusing on daily-life kindness as a form of low-cost cooperation.

Until recently, the investigation of low-cost cooperation in social psychology and behavioral economics has largely been neglected.

I aim to close this gap, investigating whether and how low-cost cooperation can actually be used to increase costly cooperation.

Having shown in preparatory studies that low-cost cooperation can be trained and that it is related to high-cost cooperation, I aim to investigate how low-cost cooperation can be internalized in such a way so that it spills over to costly cooperation.

Utilizing cutting-edge methodologies (i.e., eye-tracking and experience sampling) allows me to investigate underlying cognitive processes and boundary conditions, how and when trained low-cost cooperation generalizes to high-cost cooperation.

Most importantly, I validate the results of trained low-cost cooperation outside the laboratory (i.e., via experience sampling).

This yields an important scientific contribution that can have important implications for how we aim at promoting cooperation in the lab and in daily life.