This article presents two studies that address Axelrod’s (1984) prescription to not worry about the outcomes that others receive in a mixed-motive situation. The first study demonstrated that people do attend and react to others’ outcomes, with people whose outcomes were of a lesser magnitude than the opponent being uncooperative and people with greater-magnitude outcomes being very cooperative. This was true even though own and other outcomes were linearly equivalent. The second study showed that dispositional envy can predict rate of cooperation and that referent cognitions theory can be applied to help alleviate the impact of differing outcomes, both by making amends for small-magnitude outcomes at the end of the game (amelioration) and by providing a reasonable explanation for why the differences in outcomes exist (justification), although the former intervention was ineffective with people with high levels of dispositional envy. Discussion focuses on the role of mental simulations in the reduction of envy effects.

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This article reports 2 studies investigating the effects of retrospective thought on future cooperation in social dilemmas. Some general theories of cooperation presume, but have not tested, whether retrospection has impact: People may think about the choices they could have made instead, realize that cooperation would have produced larger outcomes, and change their strategy as a result. Across both studies, the authors show that rate of future cooperation is directly related to the number of best-case scenarios and inversely related to the number of worst-case scenarios generated. The 2nd study also shows that the number and type of retrospective thoughts generated can be predicted from the person's social value orientation.

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