Der Einfluss von Persönlichkeitsmerkmalen und persönlichen Werten auf Kooperationspräferenzen in Public Goods Experimenten: Eine kulturvergleichende Untersuchung n Deutschland und Indonesien
Final Report Abstract
In this research project we investigated to what extent individual preferences for cooperation and thirdparty punishment are affected by a person’s own cultural background, the cultural background of the exchange partner, and individual differences in personality traits and personal values. In our crosscultural sample of German and Indonesian student subjects we find no significant differences in cooperation preferences across the two cultures. Both, average contribution schedules as measured by the strategy method as well as cooperation types are not significantly different across Germans and Indonesians and similar to what has been found in previous studies using Western European subjects. Thus, while previous studies found significant cross-cultural variations in the distributions of cooperation types across cultures such as the U.S.A., Austria, and Japan, we find only very moderate variations in our sample of German and Indonesian subjects. This finding is interesting as it is in contrast to predictions of cultural theories according to which collectivistic cultures such as the Indonesian culture should be more cooperative than individualistic cultures such as the German culture. In line with predictions of social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978) and self-categorization theory (Turner, 1987) we find that in our combined sample subjects have on average a higher preference to cooperate with people of their own culture. However, a closer analysis reveals that this effect is mainly driven by Germans while Indonesians’ cooperation preferences are not affected by the cultural background of their exchange partner. A possible explanation for this finding could be the higher status of Germans as exchange partners due to their higher economic wealth. Thus, Indonesians may have considered the high-status Germans as equal to members of their cultural ingroup while Germans may not have considered the low-status Indonesians as equal to their own people. Finally, we also find that the personality dimension Honesty Humility is positively related to cooperation preferences which contributes to recent research that has identified Honesty Humility as a predictor of pro-social cooperative behavior. In contrast to our investigation of cooperation preferences, our analysis of preferences for thirdparty punishment reveals substantial cross-cultural differences. Indonesians have significantly higher preferences for third-party punishment than Germans. While this finding might at first glance suggest a more prosocial attitude of Indonesians, a closer analysis reveals that there is a substantially higher share of antisocial punishers in the Indonesian group compared to the German group. Thus, a substantial part of the third party punishment in the Indonesian group is inefficient antisocial punishment while most of the third party punishment in the German group is efficient altruistic punishment. This means that while Germans punish less, most of this punishment is directed and efficient while Indonesians punish more but often undirected and inefficient. We also find that the personality domain Emotionality plays an important role in third-party punishment. With regards to the cultural identity of the to-be-punished subject we find no effect. More precisely, the identity of the tobe-punished subject does not affect participants’ preferences for third-party punishment.
