Adult and adolescent social reciprocity: experimental data from the Trust Game.
Twenty-four adults (aged 19-35) and 27 adolescents (aged 13-14) played as 'Trustee' in an iterated Trust Game against a pre-programmed set of 'Investor' moves, said to belong to an unknown co-player. Trustee behaviour was examined first in response to normative Investor cooperation, and then in response to a period of social rupture caused by reduced investments. Adolescents were motivated by inequity aversion during normative Investor cooperation, whereas adults over-compensated the Investor. Participants were also identified as coaxers or non-coaxers based on how they responded to social rupture: 'coaxers' were individuals who made at least one relatively generous return to the Investor during this phase. A single coaxing move predicted consistently higher returns to Investors across both normative and reduced investments. Adults showed greater polarisation between coaxing and non-coaxing strategies than did adolescents. These data suggest that adults and adolescents may respond differently to periods of possible social rupture.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD, United Kingdom. stefano.belli@psy.ox.ac.uk
Stefano R
SR
Belli
Robert D
RD
Rogers
Jennifer Y F
JY
Lau
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005260:Female; D005717:Games, Experimental; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D012919:Social Behavior; D035502:Trust; D055815:Young Adult