Cooperation with characters: How a partner's personality disorder decreases cooperation in two economic games

How does your personality affect how others treat you? Previous research suggests the characteristic patterns of social behavior in personality disorders can be captured using economic games. Here we test the opposite: whether personality disorders elicit characteristic patterns of social behavior from others. Participants read vignettes portraying individuals with one of eight DSM-5 personality disorders (plus a control vignette) then played either a Prisoner's Dilemma (Experiment 1) or Chicken (Experiment 2) game with a confederate said to have been interviewed and portrayed by each vignette. Experiment 1 found higher cooperation rates in response to the control vignette in comparison to all personality disorder vignettes. Experiment 2, found similar results, apart from the vignette depicting schizoid personality disorder. Findings suggest that people use information about personality to guide how they interact with others. They also illuminate the role others play in the difficult social situations those with personality disorders frequently experience.