Perceived Social Mindfulness: An Effective Psychological Mechanism To Promote Cooperative Behaviors

Cooperative behavior is crucial to human's sustaining development. However, how such behavior occurs and how to maintain this behavior are still less commonly explored. These questions have attracted much focus from different realms such as psychology, biology, economy, and neuroscience. On a day-to-day basis, cooperative behavior can be conceptualized as a decision which is made based on the cognition of others'(both groups and individuals) psychological state, emotions, and behavioral intention during interpersonal dynamic processes(including both group-level and individual-level). Aside from economic rationality such as reward and punishment, one may also engage in cooperative behavior because of social rationality such as interpersonal trust and experienced well-being. Social mindfulness is individual's friendly concerns with and protection of others' need for autonomous during interpersonal dynamic processes. It is an imperative factor that promotes interpersonal trust and enhances others' well-being. This construct offers a new perspective for research about the mechanisms of cooperative behavior. Given this, the present research employed psychological methods to detail the theoretical connotation of social mindfulness during interpersonal processes and to demonstrate how social mindfulness affects the mechanisms of cooperative behavior through three experiments.In Study 1 an extensive literature reviewed was done to clarify the concept, research paradigm and influential mechanisms of social mindfulness. Social mindfulness refers to one's self-control ability of “concerning for others” during interpersonal processes, which can be expressed as one's initiative identification of, respect for and fulfilling of others' autonomous needs. This construct is affected by various cognitive factors(e.g., theory of mind, perspective taking, cognitive loading, etc.) and by a number personality factors(e.g., trait empathy, social value orientation, honest-humble, agreeableness, etc.). In addition, social mindfulness and social hostility are two polar of a motivation continuum. Social mindfulness promotes more trust and cooperation during interpersonal processes whereas social hostility brings out various negative interpersonal outcomes such as disgust, hatred, aggression, and so on.In study 2 two experiments were carried out. Across two experiments, SoMi Paradigm was used and individual's levels of social mindfulness was manipulated by setting the proportion of Player A's(i.e., confederate) selection of “the only goods” and “the not only goods”. Public goods game(PGG) and Centipede game(CG) were used to test participants' cooperative behavior. This study explored how participants, as receivers and observers of an action, vary in cooperative behavior when they play with the confederate high and low in social mindfulness in PGG and CG. The results showed that regardless of being a receiver or an observer, participants playing with confederate high in social mindfulness were more prone to contribute more resources in PGG(experiment 1) and to choose more “cooperation” strategies in CG(experiment 2). This suggested that one can effectively identify others' social mindful behaviors regardless of personal or vicarious experience and that the opponent in a game showing higher levels of social mindfulness would lead individual to engage in more cooperative behavior.In Study 3, two experiments were performed to explore the mediating effect of trust(experiment 3) and the moderating role social value orientation(experiment 4) in the relation of social mindfulness and cooperation. The results of mediation analysis indicated that trust partially mediated the association of social mindfulness with cooperation. Specifically, participants trusted more people with higher levels of social mindfulness, and believed more that they would not betray them, and therefore were more willing to put more resources in public account to maximize collective gains. In other words, social mindfulness provides cues of developing trust during interpersonal processes and reduces one's motivational defense, which leads to the possibility of cooperation and win-win benefit. In addition, social value orientation was found to moderate the relation of social mindfulness to cooperation. To be more specific, proselfs employed more random strategies regardless of the levels of social mindfulness of their opponents(i.e., confederate). By contrast, prosocials were more likely to choose cooperative strategies to maximize collective gains in order to avoid lose-lose situations.In Study 4 two experiments were conducted to investigate the mediation mechanism and the moderating role of autonomy in the perspective of experienced well-being. Experiment 5 and 6 provided converging evidence that positive emotion mediated the association between social mindfulness and cooperation. During interpersonal processes, the actors' levels of social mindfulness are conducive to receivers' experience of well-being, which in turn promotes subsequent cooperative behavior. This relation was moderated by receivers' levels of autonomy. When individuals' levels of autonomy were high and they were not respected or satisfied by actors(i.e., playing with people with low social mindfulness), the experienced positive emotion was significantly lower; whereas when participants' levels of autonomy were low their experienced positive emotion did not vary regardless of being respected or satisfied or not.In conclusion, the present research proposes a “double-path model of how social mindfulness promotes cooperation”. To be in more details, social mindfulness promotes cooperative behavior through higher interpersonal trust and experienced well-being. Implications for organizational management were discussed in terms of development of mutual-trust organizational climate, enhancement of employees' well-being and inclusion of social mindfulness into training system.