Personality, personal values and cooperation preferences in public goods games: A longitudinal study

Recent research on behavioral heterogeneity in social dilemma situations has increasingly focused on exploring the predictive value of individual difference variables. This paper contributes to this line of research by examining how cooperation preferences in a series of three public goods games conducted over the course of five months are related to personality traits and personal values. A variant of the four player one-shot public goods game was administered to classify participants’ cooperation preferences, along with measures of the Big-Five personality dimensions and Rokeach’s terminal values. Results revealed that, when considered independently, Agreeableness and prosocial values were indicative of individual preferences for cooperation. However, when considered simultaneously, only Agreeableness emerged as a significant predictor of cooperation preferences. The findings are interpreted in terms of how personality and personal values jointly impact economic behavior.