Making the Peers' Subjective Well-being Visible Impairs Cooperator-centered Experimental Social Networks

TL;DR

This study investigates whether making peers' subjective well-being visible in social networks affects cooperation, finding it alters network structure and connection patterns without changing overall cooperation levels.

Contribution

It provides novel experimental evidence on how visibility of subjective well-being influences social network dynamics and cooperation patterns.

Findings

Visibility of SWB increased the number of communities.

Visibility of SWB decreased network transitivity.

Cooperators connected more with defectors when SWB was visible.

Abstract

Past experiments show that reputation or the knowledge of peers' past cooperation can enhance cooperation in human social networks. On the other hand, the knowledge of peers' wealth undermines cooperativeness, and that of peers' interconnectedness and network structure does not affect it. However, it is unknown if making peers' subjective well-being (SWB) available or visible in social networks may enhance or undermine cooperation. Therefore, we implemented online network experiments (N = 662 in 50 networked groups with 15 rounds of interactions), in which study participants cooperated with or defected against connected peers through Public Goods Game, made and cut social ties with others, and rated their SWB. We manipulated the visibility of connected peers' SWB (25 visible vs. 25 invisible SWB networked groups) while keeping the connected peers' reputation and in-game wealth visible. Results show that making the peers/ SWB visible did not alter overall cooperativeness, wealth, inter-connectedness, or SWB. In contrast, the visible SWB networked groups exhibited a higher number of communities and lower transitivity (the proportion of the cases where a peer of a peer is also a peer) than the invisible SWB networked groups. These phenomena are explained by an altered decision-making pattern in the visible SWB networks: cooperators were less likely to connect with cooperators and more likely to connect with defectors, and consequently, cooperators could not maintain their popularity or stay in the center of the networks.