No abstract

Interpersonal trust has long been known to influence cooperation. This study tested the hypothesis that one's degree of trust in others will influence the extent to which one reacts to the presence of fear (or the possibility of receiving no payoff for cooperative actions) in a payoff matrix. The hypothesis was formally tested with public goods games and resource dilemma games, with fear manipulated. Results support the hypothesis: when fear was present, high trusters cooperated more frequently than low trusters; when absent, high and low trusters cooperated at the same rate. The findings held across both games. However, the effects of fear within each game were not straightforward: removing fear from the resource dilemma increased low trusters' cooperation rates, but removing fear from the public goods game decreased high trusters' cooperation rates. Results imply that discussion of the role of trust in cooperation must consider whether the particular dilemma contains an element of fear.

Six-person mock civil juries awarded significantly larger amounts for damages than did 12-person juries, and individuals preferred even larger average awards. A reversal of the "deep-pockets bias" observed earlier, an explanation involving temporal fluctuation in normative standards, during the time interval between the studies, was supported by independent data showing temporal trends in actual civil trial awards. A computational model of consensus that assumed a strong majority of those members with the most similar (closest) personal preferences decided on the median of their preferences accurately predicted award magnitude. Computer simulations explored the effects of critical faction size (majority, etc.) and location within the group, features that might in turn depend on task environment, cultural dynamics, and social context.

No abstract

This research examined how group processes alter the impact of alcohol on a judgment task requiring vigilance. The authors compared two competing explanations, deindividuation and group monitoring, for the possible effects of alcohol. Two hundred and eighty-six undergraduates with normal drinking habits undertook a vigilance task alone or in four-person groups having consumed either alcohol (calculated to achieve up to .08 blood alcohol content) or a placebo. The vigilance task required them to count occurrences of the word "the" in a spoken passage. Alcohol significantly impaired the performance of individuals but not groups. Group members performed at a similar level in both conditions, making fewer errors than individuals in the alcohol condition. The fit of different decision-making models were tested. In both the alcohol and placebo conditions, group consensus was predicted by processes consistent with the group monitoring hypothesis. The evidence highlights that under certain conditions, group process can compensate for the cognitively impairing effects of alcohol on individuals.