Why do we care so much for friends-much more than one might predict from reciprocity alone? According to a recent theory, organisms who cooperate with each other come to have a stake in each other's well-being: A good cooperator is worth protecting-even anonymously if necessary-so they can be available to cooperate in the future. Here, we present three experiments showing that reciprocity creates a stake in a partner's well-being, such that people are willing to secretly pay to protect good cooperative partners, if doing so keeps those partners available for future interaction. Participants played five rounds of a cooperative game (Prisoner's Dilemma) and then received an opportunity to help their partner, without the partner ever knowing. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were more willing to help a cooperative partner if doing so kept that partner available for future rounds, compared to when the help simply raised the partner's earnings. This effect was specific to cooperative partners: The type of help mattered less for uncooperative partners or for recipients that participants did not directly interact with. In other words, an ongoing history of reciprocity gave people a stake in their partner's good condition but not their partner's payoff. Experiment 3 showed that participants had less stake in their partners if those partners could be easily replaced by another cooperator. These findings show that reciprocity and stake are not separate processes. Instead, even shallow reciprocity creates a deeper stake in a partner's well-being, including a willingness to help with zero expectation of recognition. Future work should examine how one's stake in partners is affected by ecological factors that affect the gains of cooperation and the ease of finding new partners. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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相互合作让您与伴侣的福利息息相关，尤其是当他们是不可替代的时。


为什么我们如此关心朋友——比仅从互惠关系中预测的要多得多？根据最近的一种理论，相互合作的生物体与彼此的福祉息息相关：一个好的合作者值得保护——必要时甚至可以匿名保护——这样它们就可以在未来进行合作。在这里，我们提出了三个实验，表明互惠关系与合作伙伴的福祉息息相关，以至于人们愿意偷偷支付以保护好的合作伙伴，前提是这样做可以让这些合作伙伴在未来的互动中可用。参与者玩了五轮合作游戏（囚徒困境），然后有机会在伙伴不知情的情况下帮助他们的伙伴。在实验 1 和 2 中，与帮助仅仅提高合作伙伴的收入相比，如果这样做可以让合作伙伴在未来几轮中可用，则参与者更愿意帮助合作伙伴。这种效果是特定于合作伙伴的：对于不合作的合作伙伴或参与者没有直接互动的接受者来说，帮助的类型不太重要。换句话说，持续的互惠历史让人们对伴侣的良好状况感兴趣，而不是伴侣的回报。实验 3 表明，如果这些合作伙伴可以很容易地被另一个合作者取代，那么参与者在他们的合作伙伴中的股份就会减少。这些发现表明，互惠和利害关系不是独立的过程。相反，即使是肤浅的互惠也会对伴侣的福祉产生更深的利害关系，包括愿意提供帮助，而对认可的期望为零。未来的工作应该研究一个人在合作伙伴中的股份如何受到生态因素的影响，这些因素会影响合作的收益和寻找新合作伙伴的难易程度。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。