The Value of a Smile Game theory with a human face.pdfVIP

The Value of a Smile: Game theory with a human face Jörn P. W. Scharlemann Linacre College Catherine C. Eckel Department of Economics (0316) Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA 24061 eckelc@ 540-231-7707 Alex Kacelnik Department of Biology Oxford University Rick K. Wilson Department of Political Science Rice University Houston, TX 77251-1892 rkw@ (713) 527-8101 * Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. September 2-5, 1999. Atlanta, GA. The authors thank a bunch of folks. i Abstract Many economists and biologists view cooperation as anomalous: animals (including humans) who pursue their own self-interest have superior survival odds to their altruistic or cooperative neighbors. However, in many situations there are substantial gains to the group that can achieve cooperation among its members, and to individuals who are members of those groups. For an individual, the key to successful cooperation is the ability to identify cooperative partners. The ability to signal and detect the intention to cooperate would be a very valuable skill for humans to posses. Smiling is frequently observed in social interactions between humans, and may be used as a signal of the intention to cooperate. However, given that humans have the ability to smile falsely, the ability to detect intentions may go far beyond the ability to recognize a smile. In the present study, we examine the value of a smile in a simple bargaining context. 120 subjects participate in a laboratory experiment consisting of a simple two-person, one-shot “trust” game with monetary payoffs. Each subject is shown a photograph of his partner prior to the game; the photograph is taken from a collection that includes one smiling and one unsmiling image for each of