Market cognition: How exchange norms alter social experience

Abstract

Market exchange and the ideologies that accompany it pervade human social interaction. How does this affect people’s beliefs about themselves, each other, and human nature? Here we describe market cognition (MC) as social inferences and behaviors that are intensified by market contexts. We focus on prosociality, and two countervailing ways MC can affect it. On the one hand, marketplaces incentivize individuals to behave prosocially in order to be chosen as exchange partners—generalizing cooperation and trust beyond group boundaries. On the other hand, markets encourage a view of people as self-interested, and can thus taint people’s interpretation of prosocial actions and erode more communal forms of cooperation. We close by considering how MCs can become self-fulfilling, altering relationships, communities, and cultural norms.

Judgments in the Sharing Economy: The Effect of User-Generated Trust and Reputation Information on Decision-Making Accuracy and Bias

“…The generally high levels of rent decisions, confidence, and host perception ratings also speak to another component of the SE: people display a general high level of trust. The current pattern of results echoes past research on people’s perception of SE platforms ( Livan et al, 2017 ; Zloteanu et al, 2018 ; Zaki et al, 2021 ). Importantly, trust seems to have a transitive property, as trust in users tends to result in trust in the platform (and vice-versa) (but see Yang et al, 2019 ).…”

“…This resonates with research on users preferring more authentic-style accommodations for their SE experiences ( Mody et al, 2019 ). Should our speculation be confirmed, it would provide a rather stark contrast with the actual outcomes seen in SE platforms, whose “5-for-5” ethos – somewhat encouraged by the platforms’ design – ultimately leads almost all profiles to appear “above average” ( Zaki et al, 2021 ; Zervas et al, 2021 ). Future research may consider investigating such an effect, especially in light of the overly positive information typically featured on SE platforms.…”

“…The high correlations between the three host metrics indicate that users tend to have a halo-like judgment of individuals on SE platforms (Nicolau et al, 2020). Given the considerable lack of negative feedback in real-world SE platforms (Zaki et al, 2021), a caveat of this is that, currently, the diagnosticity present in our artificial platform may be higher and more apparent than in SE platforms, at least from a distributional perspective (see Koh et al, 2019).…”

“…Indeed, research shows that the majority of TRI reflects a hyper-positive view ( Zervas et al, 2021 ), where the majority of reviews, comments, or ratings are much more positive than would be expected by chance or when compared to non-SE e-commerce platforms ( McKnight et al, 2002a , b ). This underreporting of negative TRI may be in part due to users fearing retaliation or ostracism if they provide critical feedback ( Bolton et al, 2013 ; Zervas et al, 2021 ), resulting in what is referred to as tainted prosociality ( Zaki et al, 2021 ). However, due to the asymmetry in information between consumers and prosumers inherent to SE platforms (e.g., anonymity, lack of accountability), users are forced to rely on such TRI to inform their decision-making.…”

Belief in Altruistic Motives Predicts Prosocial Actions and Inferences

“…However our research does not address how people form lay theories of altruism to begin with. As such, one important and exciting direction for future work to consider is how differences in peoples’ beliefs about altruism develop (Cialdini et al., 1981; Perry et al., 1986), for instance through exposure to prosocial norms (Clark & Mills, 1979; Miller, 1999; Nook et al., 2016; Zaki et al., 2021), or popular science accounts of altruism and self-interest (Dawkins, 1976).…”