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Smiling is a Costly Signal of Cooperation Opportunities : Experimental Evidence from a Trust Game

Seabright, Paul; Milinski, Manfred; Hopfensitz, Astrid; Djemaï, Elodie; Centorrino, Samuele (2011-04), Smiling is a Costly Signal of Cooperation Opportunities : Experimental Evidence from a Trust Game. https://basepub.dauphine.fr/handle/123456789/7309

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smiles.pdf (255.3Kb)
Type
Document de travail / Working paper
Date
2011-04
Publisher
Institut d’Économie Industrielle, Université Toulouse 1
Series title
IDEI Working Paper Series
Series number
669
Published in
Toulouse
Pages
44
Metadata
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Author(s)
Seabright, Paul
Milinski, Manfred
Hopfensitz, Astrid
Djemaï, Elodie
Centorrino, Samuele
Abstract (EN)
We test the hypothesis that "genuine" or "convincing" smiling is a costly signal that has evolved to induce cooperation in situations requiring mutual trust. Potential trustees in a trust game made video clips for viewing by potential trusters before the latter decided whether to send them money. Ratings of the genuineness of smiles vary across clips; it is difficult to make convincing smiles to order. We argue that smiling convincingly is costly, because smiles from trustees playing for higher stakes are rated as significantly more convincing, so that rewards appear to induce effort. We show that it induces cooperation : smiles rated as more convincing strongly predict judgments about the trustworthiness of trustees, and willingness to send them money. Finally, we show that it is a honest signal : those smiling convincingly return more money on average to senders. Convincing smiles are to some extent a signal of the intrinsic character of trustees : less honest individuals find smiling convincingly more difficult. They are also informative about the greater amounts that trustees playing for higher stakes have available to share : it is harder to smile convincingly if you have less to offer.
Subjects / Keywords
Costly signaling; experiment; Smiling; trust game; video
JEL
D03 - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
D85 - Network Formation and Analysis: Theory
D87 - Neuroeconomics
Z13 - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Social and Economic Stratification

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