Daniel Balliet
Biographic Data
| ID | 207343 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel Balliet |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel |
| FAMILY NAME | Balliet |
| SIGNATURE | BALLIET D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5365-9675 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 497 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Trait activation in daily life: Comparing two perspectives on person-situation interactions
Trait activation theory posits that personality traits are expressed when trait-relevant situational cues—affordances—are present. While prior work has primarily examined how situational affordances moderate trait–behavior associations (an affordance-gradient perspective), comparatively less attention has been given to how multiple traits are differentially activated within affordance-relevant situations (an affordance-configured perspective), es…
Sources of fitness interdependence associated with shared fate and cooperation in a small-scale horticultural society
Social class and prosociality: A meta-analytic review
Two theoretical perspectives (i.e., the risk management perspective and the resource perspective) offer competing predictions that higher class individuals-relative to lower class individuals-tend to be less versus more prosocial, respectively. Different predictions can also be drawn from each perspective about how the class-prosociality association varies across sociocultural contexts. To date, each perspective has received mixed empirical suppo…
Introduction to the special issue on gossip and group processes
Task affordances affect partner preferences
Institutions and cooperation: A meta-analysis of structural features in social dilemmas
Identity and Institutions as Foundations of Ingroup Favoritism: An Investigation Across 17 Countries
Ingroup favoritism can represent a challenge for establishing cooperation beyond group boundaries. In a behavioral experiment conducted across 17 societies ( N = 3,236), we tested pre-registered hypotheses forwarded by social identity and material security frameworks to account for ingroup favoritism in trust toward national ingroups. We related individual-level measures of national identification and perception of institutions to trust, trustwor…
Revisiting situational strength: Do strong situations restrict variance in behaviors
The idea that strong situations restrict variance in behaviors has been treated as a maxim in psychology. Prior work has, however, offered inconclusive support for this proposition. We aimed to overcome the limitations of prior research to conclusively test the restricted variance hypothesis derived from the situational strength framework. Specifically, we conducted a preregistered meta-analysis ( k = 301, N = 25,670) in the context of cooperativ…
Conflict, cooperation, and institutional choice
Social situations may vary in the severity of conflict between self-interest and collective welfare, and thereby pose collective action problems that might require different institutional solutions. The present study examines the effect of conflict of interests on beliefs, norms, cooperation, and choice of sanctioning institutions in social dilemmas across two experiments (total N = 1304). In each experiment, participants interacted in a public g…
The Cooperation Databank: Machine-Readable Science Accelerates Research Synthesis
Publishing studies using standardized, machine-readable formats will enable machines to perform meta-analyses on demand. To build a semantically enhanced technology that embodies these functions, we developed the Cooperation Databank (CoDa)—a databank that contains 2,636 studies on human cooperation (1958–2017) conducted in 78 societies involving 356,283 participants. Experts annotated these studies along 312 variables, including the quantitative…
Cross-cultural variation in cooperation: A meta-analysis
783). Thus, we observed that impersonal cooperation occurred in all societies-and to a similar degree across societies-suggesting that prior research may have overemphasized the magnitude of differences between modern societies in impersonal cooperation. We discuss the discrepancy between theory, past empirical research and the meta-analysis, address a limitation of experimental research on cooperation to study culture, and raise possible directi…
Four Puzzles of Reputation-Based Cooperation: Content, Process, Honesty, and Structure
Research in various disciplines has highlighted that humans are uniquely able to solve the problem of cooperation through the informal mechanisms of reputation and gossip. Reputation coordinates the evaluative judgments of individuals about one another. Direct observation of actions and communication are the essential routes that are used to establish and update reputations. In large groups, where opportunities for direct observation are limited,…
Did cooperation among strangers decline in the United States? A cross-temporal meta-analysis of social dilemmas (1956-2017)
Cooperation among strangers has been hypothesized to have declined in theUnited States over the past several decades, an alarming trend that has potential far-reaching societal consequences. To date, most research that supports a decline in cooperation has relied on self-report measures or archival data. Here, we utilize the history of experimental research on cooperation in situations involving conflicting interests (i.e., social dilemmas). We m…
Cooperation and Trust Across Societies During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust among strangers in the provision of public goods may be key to understanding how societies are managing the COVID-19 pandemic. We report a survey conducted across 41 societies between March and May 2020 ( N = 34,526), and test pre-registered hypotheses about how cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust relate to prosocial COVID-19 responses (e.g., social distancing), stringency of pol…
Change in unit‐level job attitudes following strategic interventions: A meta‐analysis of longitudinal studies
The present meta‐analysis tests how cost‐ and people‐oriented strategic interventions impact temporal‐dynamic changes in unit‐level job attitudes within organizations. Analyses are based on 573 effect sizes across 137 longitudinal studies containing unit‐level change in job attitudes across three time periods (pre‐change, during change, and post‐change). Results reveal that unit‐level job attitudes (a) decline during cost‐oriented changes (e.g., …
Direct and indirect punishment of norm violations in daily life
Across societies, humans punish norm violations. To date, research on the antecedents and consequences of punishment has largely relied upon agent-based modeling and laboratory experiments. Here, we report a longitudinal study documenting punishment responses to norm violations in daily life ( k = 1507; N = 257) and test pre-registered hypotheses about the antecedents of direct punishment (i.e., confrontation) and indirect punishment (i.e., gossi…
Fostering Attachment Security: The Role of Interdependent Situations
This work adopts an Interdependence Theory framework to investigate how the features of interdependent situations that couples face in their daily life (i.e., situations in which partners influence each other's outcomes) shape attachment security toward their current partners. An experience sampling study examined attachment tendencies and features of interdependent situations that people experience with their partner in daily life to predict sat…
Interdependence and cooperation in daily life
Philosophers and scientists have long debated the nature of human social interactions and the prevalence of mutual dependence, conflict of interests, and power asymmetry in social situations. Yet, there is surprisingly little empirical work documenting the patterns of interdependence that people experience in daily life. We use experience sampling to study how people think about 3 dimensions of interdependence in daily life and how these dimensio…
Generosity among the Ik of Uganda
Personality and prosocial behavior: A theoretical framework and meta-analysis
Decades of research document individual differences in prosocial behavior using controlled experiments that model social interactions in situations of interdependence.However, theoretical and empirical integration of the vast literature on the predictive validity of personality traits to account for these individual differences is missing.Here, we present a theoretical framework that identifies 4 broad situational affordances across interdependen…
Political Ideology, Trust, and Cooperation: In-group Favoritism among Republicans and Democrats during a US National Election
Theories suggest that political ideology relates to cooperation, with conservatives being more likely to pursue selfish outcomes, and liberals more likely to pursue egalitarian outcomes. In study 1, we examine how political ideology and political party affiliation (Republican vs. Democrat) predict cooperation with a partner who self-identifies as Republican or Democrat in two samples before ( n = 362) and after ( n = 366) the 2012 US presidential…
How do people think about interdependence? A multidimensional model of subjective outcome interdependence
Interdependence is a fundamental characteristic of social interactions. Interdependence Theory states that 6 dimensions describe differences between social situations. Here we examine if these 6 dimensions describe how people think about their interdependence with others in a situation. We find that people (in situ and ex situ) can reliably differentiate situations according to 5, but not 6, dimensions of interdependence: (a) mutual dependence, (…
Understanding cooperation through fitness interdependence
Life history strategy and human cooperation in economic games
Parochial trust and cooperation across 17 societies
Significance In a study including 17 societies, we found that people are motivated to trust and cooperate more with their ingroup, than harm the outgroup. Reputation-based indirect reciprocity may offset this ingroup favoritism, because we found that reputational concern universally increases cooperation with both ingroup and outgroup members. We also found that people who are dispositionally cooperative are less parochial and more universal in t…
Ingroup favoritism in cooperation: A meta-analysis
Although theory suggests individuals are more willing to incur a personal cost to benefit ingroup members, compared to outgroup members, there is inconsistent evidence in support of this perspective. Applying meta-analytic techniques, we harness a relatively recent explosion of research on intergroup discrimination in cooperative decision making to address several fundamental unresolved issues. First, summarizing evidence across studies, we find …
Personality and prosocial behavior: A theoretical framework and meta-analysis
Decades of research document individual differences in prosocial behavior using controlled experiments that model social interactions in situations of interdependence.However, theoretical and empirical integration of the vast literature on the predictive validity of personality traits to account for these individual differences is missing.Here, we present a theoretical framework that identifies 4 broad situational affordances across interdependen…
Social Value Orientation and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas: A Meta-Analysis
This article reports a meta-analysis of 82 studies assessing the relationship between social value orientation (SVO) and cooperation in social dilemmas. A significant and small to medium effect size was found ( r = .30). Results supported a hypothesis that the effect size was larger when participants were not paid ( r = .39) than when they were paid ( r = .23). The effect size was also larger in give-some ( r = .29) as opposed to take-some ( r = …
Trust, conflict, and cooperation: A meta-analysis
Many theories of trust emphasize that trust is most relevant to behavior in situations involving a conflict of interests. However, it is not clear how trust relates to behavior across situations that differ in the degree of conflicting interest: Does trust matter more when the conflict of interest is small or large? According to an interdependence perspective, trust becomes an especially important determinant of behavior in situations involving l…
Reward, punishment, and cooperation: A meta-analysis
How effective are rewards (for cooperation) and punishment (for noncooperation) as tools to promote cooperation in social dilemmas or situations when immediate self-interest and longer term collective interest conflict? What variables can promote the impact of these incentives? Although such questions have been examined, social and behavioral scientists provide different answers. To date, there is no theoretical and/or quantitative review of rewa…
Promotion Orientation Explains Why Future-Oriented People Exercise and Eat Healthy: Evidence From the Two-Factor Consideration of Future Consequences-14 Scale
The authors extended research linking individual differences in consideration of future consequences (CFC) with health behaviors by (a) testing whether individual differences in regulatory focus would mediate that link and (b) highlighting the value of a revised, two-factor CFC-14 scale with subscales assessing concern with future consequences (CFC-Future) and concern with immediate consequences (CFC-Immediate) proper. Exploratory and confirmator…
Political Ideology, Trust, and Cooperation: In-group Favoritism among Republicans and Democrats during a US National Election
Theories suggest that political ideology relates to cooperation, with conservatives being more likely to pursue selfish outcomes, and liberals more likely to pursue egalitarian outcomes. In study 1, we examine how political ideology and political party affiliation (Republican vs. Democrat) predict cooperation with a partner who self-identifies as Republican or Democrat in two samples before ( n = 362) and after ( n = 366) the 2012 US presidential…
Mate preferences do predict attraction and choices in the early stages of mate selection
Although mate preference research has firmly established that men value physical attractiveness more than women do and women value social status more than men do, recent speed-dating studies have indicated mixed evidence (at best) for whether people's sex-differentiated mate preferences predict actual mate choices. According to an evolutionary, mate preference priority model (Li, Bailey, Kenrick, & Linsenmeier, 2002; Li & Kenrick, 2006; Li, Valen…
How do people think about interdependence? A multidimensional model of subjective outcome interdependence
Interdependence is a fundamental characteristic of social interactions. Interdependence Theory states that 6 dimensions describe differences between social situations. Here we examine if these 6 dimensions describe how people think about their interdependence with others in a situation. We find that people (in situ and ex situ) can reliably differentiate situations according to 5, but not 6, dimensions of interdependence: (a) mutual dependence, (…
Understanding cooperation through fitness interdependence
Generosity among the Ik of Uganda
The Incompatibility of Materialism and the Desire for Children: Psychological Insights into the Fertility Discrepancy Among Modern Countries
Cross-cultural variation in cooperation: A meta-analysis
783). Thus, we observed that impersonal cooperation occurred in all societies-and to a similar degree across societies-suggesting that prior research may have overemphasized the magnitude of differences between modern societies in impersonal cooperation. We discuss the discrepancy between theory, past empirical research and the meta-analysis, address a limitation of experimental research on cooperation to study culture, and raise possible directi…
Interdependence and cooperation in daily life
Philosophers and scientists have long debated the nature of human social interactions and the prevalence of mutual dependence, conflict of interests, and power asymmetry in social situations. Yet, there is surprisingly little empirical work documenting the patterns of interdependence that people experience in daily life. We use experience sampling to study how people think about 3 dimensions of interdependence in daily life and how these dimensio…
Unbounded indirect reciprocity: Is reputation-based cooperation bounded by group membership
Four Puzzles of Reputation-Based Cooperation: Content, Process, Honesty, and Structure
Research in various disciplines has highlighted that humans are uniquely able to solve the problem of cooperation through the informal mechanisms of reputation and gossip. Reputation coordinates the evaluative judgments of individuals about one another. Direct observation of actions and communication are the essential routes that are used to establish and update reputations. In large groups, where opportunities for direct observation are limited,…
Relating trait self-control and forgiveness within prosocials and proselfs: Compensatory versus synergistic models
The present research tested 2 competing models specifying how 2 traits (concern with the well-being of others and self-control) interact to predict forgiveness. According to the compensatory model, forgiveness requires being high on either trait; according to the synergistic model, forgiveness requires being high on both traits. Two preliminary studies demonstrated the main effect of trait (Study 1a) and primed (Study 1b) self-control on forgiven…
Ego depletion reduces proselfs' concern with the well-being of others
Previous research suggests that people predisposed toward a more cooperative orientation are stronger at self-control and, accordingly, are better able to ward off the adverse impact of ego depletion on self-regulation (Seeley & Gardner, 2003). Building on this research, we tested the hypothesis that ego depletion would lead to a reduction in concern with the well-being of others among proselfs, but not among prosocials. Study 1 supported the bas…
Institutions and cooperation: A meta-analysis of structural features in social dilemmas
Revisiting situational strength: Do strong situations restrict variance in behaviors
The idea that strong situations restrict variance in behaviors has been treated as a maxim in psychology. Prior work has, however, offered inconclusive support for this proposition. We aimed to overcome the limitations of prior research to conclusively test the restricted variance hypothesis derived from the situational strength framework. Specifically, we conducted a preregistered meta-analysis ( k = 301, N = 25,670) in the context of cooperativ…
Did cooperation among strangers decline in the United States? A cross-temporal meta-analysis of social dilemmas (1956-2017)
Cooperation among strangers has been hypothesized to have declined in theUnited States over the past several decades, an alarming trend that has potential far-reaching societal consequences. To date, most research that supports a decline in cooperation has relied on self-report measures or archival data. Here, we utilize the history of experimental research on cooperation in situations involving conflicting interests (i.e., social dilemmas). We m…
Social Value Orientation and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas: A Meta-Analysis
This article reports a meta-analysis of 82 studies assessing the relationship between social value orientation (SVO) and cooperation in social dilemmas. A significant and small to medium effect size was found ( r = .30). Results supported a hypothesis that the effect size was larger when participants were not paid ( r = .39) than when they were paid ( r = .23). The effect size was also larger in give-some ( r = .29) as opposed to take-some ( r = …
Communication and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas: A Meta-Analytic Review
Among the most researched solutions to social dilemmas is communication. Since the late 1950s, it has been well known that communication enhances cooperation in social dilemmas. This article reports a meta-analysis of this literature (forty-five effect sizes) and finds a large positive effect of communication on cooperation in social dilemmas ( d = 1.01). This effect is moderated by the type of communication, with a stronger effect of face-to-fac…
Ego depletion reduces proselfs' concern with the well-being of others
Previous research suggests that people predisposed toward a more cooperative orientation are stronger at self-control and, accordingly, are better able to ward off the adverse impact of ego depletion on self-regulation (Seeley & Gardner, 2003). Building on this research, we tested the hypothesis that ego depletion would lead to a reduction in concern with the well-being of others among proselfs, but not among prosocials. Study 1 supported the bas…
Sex differences in cooperation: A meta-analytic review of social dilemmas
Although it is commonly believed that women are kinder and more cooperative than men, there is conflicting evidence for this assertion. Current theories of sex differences in social behavior suggest that it may be useful to examine in what situations men and women are likely to differ in cooperation. Here, we derive predictions from both sociocultural and evolutionary perspectives on context-specific sex differences in cooperation, and we conduct…
Relating trait self-control and forgiveness within prosocials and proselfs: Compensatory versus synergistic models
The present research tested 2 competing models specifying how 2 traits (concern with the well-being of others and self-control) interact to predict forgiveness. According to the compensatory model, forgiveness requires being high on either trait; according to the synergistic model, forgiveness requires being high on both traits. Two preliminary studies demonstrated the main effect of trait (Study 1a) and primed (Study 1b) self-control on forgiven…
Reward, punishment, and cooperation: A meta-analysis
How effective are rewards (for cooperation) and punishment (for noncooperation) as tools to promote cooperation in social dilemmas or situations when immediate self-interest and longer term collective interest conflict? What variables can promote the impact of these incentives? Although such questions have been examined, social and behavioral scientists provide different answers. To date, there is no theoretical and/or quantitative review of rewa…
The Incompatibility of Materialism and the Desire for Children: Psychological Insights into the Fertility Discrepancy Among Modern Countries
Promotion Orientation Explains Why Future-Oriented People Exercise and Eat Healthy: Evidence From the Two-Factor Consideration of Future Consequences-14 Scale
The authors extended research linking individual differences in consideration of future consequences (CFC) with health behaviors by (a) testing whether individual differences in regulatory focus would mediate that link and (b) highlighting the value of a revised, two-factor CFC-14 scale with subscales assessing concern with future consequences (CFC-Future) and concern with immediate consequences (CFC-Immediate) proper. Exploratory and confirmator…
Trust, Punishment, and Cooperation Across 18 Societies: A Meta-Analysis
Punishment promotes contributions to public goods, but recent evidence suggests that its effectiveness varies across societies. Prior theorizing suggests that cross-societal differences in trust play a key role in determining the effectiveness of punishment, as a form of social norm enforcement, to promote cooperation. One line of reasoning is that punishment promotes cooperation in low-trust societies, primarily because people in such societies …
Mate preferences do predict attraction and choices in the early stages of mate selection
Although mate preference research has firmly established that men value physical attractiveness more than women do and women value social status more than men do, recent speed-dating studies have indicated mixed evidence (at best) for whether people's sex-differentiated mate preferences predict actual mate choices. According to an evolutionary, mate preference priority model (Li, Bailey, Kenrick, & Linsenmeier, 2002; Li & Kenrick, 2006; Li, Valen…
Trust, conflict, and cooperation: A meta-analysis
Many theories of trust emphasize that trust is most relevant to behavior in situations involving a conflict of interests. However, it is not clear how trust relates to behavior across situations that differ in the degree of conflicting interest: Does trust matter more when the conflict of interest is small or large? According to an interdependence perspective, trust becomes an especially important determinant of behavior in situations involving l…
Ingroup favoritism in cooperation: A meta-analysis
Although theory suggests individuals are more willing to incur a personal cost to benefit ingroup members, compared to outgroup members, there is inconsistent evidence in support of this perspective. Applying meta-analytic techniques, we harness a relatively recent explosion of research on intergroup discrimination in cooperative decision making to address several fundamental unresolved issues. First, summarizing evidence across studies, we find …
When Does Gossip Promote Generosity? Indirect Reciprocity Under the Shadow of the Future
Reputation through gossip is a key mechanism promoting cooperation. The present research proposes that gossip promotes cooperation when one anticipates future interdependence with the gossip recipient (Hypothesis 1), that this effect is more pronounced for proself, compared to prosocial, individuals (Hypothesis 2), and explores the mediating role of reputational concern and expected indirect benefits in the relation between gossip and cooperation…
Reputation management: Why and how gossip enhances generosity
Life history strategy and human cooperation in economic games
Parochial trust and cooperation across 17 societies
Significance In a study including 17 societies, we found that people are motivated to trust and cooperate more with their ingroup, than harm the outgroup. Reputation-based indirect reciprocity may offset this ingroup favoritism, because we found that reputational concern universally increases cooperation with both ingroup and outgroup members. We also found that people who are dispositionally cooperative are less parochial and more universal in t…
Unbounded indirect reciprocity: Is reputation-based cooperation bounded by group membership
Political Ideology, Trust, and Cooperation: In-group Favoritism among Republicans and Democrats during a US National Election
Theories suggest that political ideology relates to cooperation, with conservatives being more likely to pursue selfish outcomes, and liberals more likely to pursue egalitarian outcomes. In study 1, we examine how political ideology and political party affiliation (Republican vs. Democrat) predict cooperation with a partner who self-identifies as Republican or Democrat in two samples before ( n = 362) and after ( n = 366) the 2012 US presidential…
How do people think about interdependence? A multidimensional model of subjective outcome interdependence
Interdependence is a fundamental characteristic of social interactions. Interdependence Theory states that 6 dimensions describe differences between social situations. Here we examine if these 6 dimensions describe how people think about their interdependence with others in a situation. We find that people (in situ and ex situ) can reliably differentiate situations according to 5, but not 6, dimensions of interdependence: (a) mutual dependence, (…
Understanding cooperation through fitness interdependence
Direct and indirect punishment of norm violations in daily life
Across societies, humans punish norm violations. To date, research on the antecedents and consequences of punishment has largely relied upon agent-based modeling and laboratory experiments. Here, we report a longitudinal study documenting punishment responses to norm violations in daily life ( k = 1507; N = 257) and test pre-registered hypotheses about the antecedents of direct punishment (i.e., confrontation) and indirect punishment (i.e., gossi…
Fostering Attachment Security: The Role of Interdependent Situations
This work adopts an Interdependence Theory framework to investigate how the features of interdependent situations that couples face in their daily life (i.e., situations in which partners influence each other's outcomes) shape attachment security toward their current partners. An experience sampling study examined attachment tendencies and features of interdependent situations that people experience with their partner in daily life to predict sat…
Interdependence and cooperation in daily life
Philosophers and scientists have long debated the nature of human social interactions and the prevalence of mutual dependence, conflict of interests, and power asymmetry in social situations. Yet, there is surprisingly little empirical work documenting the patterns of interdependence that people experience in daily life. We use experience sampling to study how people think about 3 dimensions of interdependence in daily life and how these dimensio…
Generosity among the Ik of Uganda
Personality and prosocial behavior: A theoretical framework and meta-analysis
Decades of research document individual differences in prosocial behavior using controlled experiments that model social interactions in situations of interdependence.However, theoretical and empirical integration of the vast literature on the predictive validity of personality traits to account for these individual differences is missing.Here, we present a theoretical framework that identifies 4 broad situational affordances across interdependen…
Psychology (35 works) · Social Psychology (32 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (23 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (21 works) · Political science (14 works) · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (13 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Computer Science (9 works)