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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Behav. Econ.
Sec. Behavioral Microfoundations
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frbhe.2025.1493427
This article is part of the Research Topic Coordination/Cooperation Games View all 3 articles

Cooperation Beyond Group Boundaries is Evaluated Differently Depending on the Existence of Intergroup Competition

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 Hokkaido Musashi Women's University, Sapporo, Japan
  • 2 Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaidō, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Do reputational mechanisms hinder or promote cooperation beyond group boundaries? This study explores the possibility that individuals lose reputational benefits within their group when they cooperate beyond group boundaries. We examined the evaluations of those who cooperated only with ingroup members (i.e., ingroup favoring strategy) and those who cooperated with both ingroup and outgroup members (i.e., universalistic strategy) by manipulating the existence of intergroup competition through an incentivized behavioral experiment. The results show that individuals' reputations were evaluated differently depending on conditions. In the competitive condition, the ingroup favoring strategy was evaluated more positively than the universalistic strategy. In the noncompetitive condition, the universalistic strategy was evaluated as positively as the ingroup favoring strategy. The reputational dynamics of indirect reciprocity are less likely to promote cooperation beyond group boundaries, particularly in the existence of intergroup competition.

    Keywords: reputation, cooperation, intergroup, Indirect reciprocity, Behavioral experiment

    Received: 09 Sep 2024; Accepted: 29 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Tateishi and Takahashi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Wakaba Tateishi, Hokkaido Musashi Women's University, Sapporo, Japan

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.