Essays on cognition and cooperation

In the last decade, scholars have studied cooperation in oneshotanonymous interactions under a dual-process perspectiveto understand whether it is more likely to be the resultof decisions made relying on an intuitive process or whetherit requires deliberation. The Social Heuristic Hypothesis predictsthat, in one-shot anonymous interactions, cooperationis the result of an intuitive process. Although there is empiricalevidence in favor of this hypothesis, many experimentsfailed to replicate such results. In this Dissertation, we tryto reconcile the mixed evidence by exploring additional aspectsof the causal link between the modes of cognition andcooperation, such as possible moderator factors, and by exploringthe reliability of cognitive manipulations. In Chapter1, we investigate the role of altruism and reciprocity in theonline one-shot Public Goods Game, both with and withoutthe cognitive manipulations. In Chapter 2, we explore therole of social norms and altruism in the online one-shot PublicGoods Game under cognitive manipulations. In the lastChapter, we develop an experimental design to validate thetreatments used to induce intuition and deliberation. As aproxy of the effectiveness of the cognitive manipulations, weuse the Cognitive Reflection Test. This is a measure of theability of individuals to resist intuitive responses and to engagein further reflection. In Chapter 1, we find that altruismgoes with larger contribution levels under both treatments;reciprocity predicts contribution levels only under treatmentdesigned to foster deliberation. In Chapter 2, we find thatcontributions and descriptive norms are higher whereas injunctivenorms are more extreme under an experimental manipulationdesigned to foster deliberation. Finally, in the lastChapter, we find that the treatment designed to foster deliberationincreases the likelihood to provide correct answers,while the treatment designed to foster intuition increases thelikelihood to provide non-intuitive incorrect answers.