Cooperation creates moral obligations

Abstract

In a large-scale economic experiment, conducted with a general population sample from the United States, we show that cooperation is seen to create relationship-specific moral obligations among those who cooperate. Participants in the experiment, acting as third party spectators, transfer significantly more money from a lucky to an unlucky worker when the two workers have cooperated with each other than when they have worked independently. In contrast, cooperation is not seen to make the unlucky worker more deserving of help from workers they have not cooperated with. The effect of cooperation is strongly associated with political affiliation: Republicans attach significantly less importance to cooperation as a source of moral obligations than non-Republicans. The findings shed light on the foundations of redistributive preferences and may help explain the difference in the willingness to help in-group members and out-group members.