Discussion
’ cooperative behavior
In this study, we show how prior competition-driven outcomes shape participants’ subsequent cooperative behavior toward their previous opponents in contexts involving different levels of risk for personal losses and gains. By examining the psychological reactions of participants to outcome feedback during competition, we demonstrated a detrimental impact of the defeat outcome compared to the victory outcome. Specifically, defeat compared to victory exerted a deleterious effect on the self-confidence of participants and on their subsequent interpersonal relationships with opponents as assessed by interpersonal closeness and trust. It has been proposed that the nature of one’s competitive interactions with others largely depends on one’s evaluation of competition-outcome feedbackFurthermore, we found that relative to the control group, the uncertain competitive outcome group was less inclined to cooperate and contribute to the public good. This was despite the fact that this condition exerted no discernible effect on either their self-confidence or their relationships with opponents. This implies that there may be distinct psychological processes at play. This argument is supported by our mediation results. Thus, defeats had a negative effect on the subsequent cooperative behavior of participants via the mediating role of their own willingness to cooperate and the perceived trustworthiness of their opponents. In contrast, a comparable impact of competition participation with individual performance feedback (uncertain competitive outcome) on participants’ cooperative behavior was achieved only through the mediating role of participants’ willingness to cooperate. These findings not only provide further evidence supporting the theory of planned behavior (TPB)In addition to the findings outlined above, our study provides new insights into how behavioral changes induced by initial competitive experiences, determined by defeats and uncertain competitive outcomes, interact with the motive of participants’ self-interest to form their decisions to cooperate with their opponents. Specifically, when there was no risk of personal loss, but only gains, depending on the contributions made by their opponents, only the defeated group remained less inclined to cooperate with their opponents (compared to the victory and control groups). However, we did not observe such an effect on participants’ actual contributions to the public good in the same context. Those who suffered defeats during the competitive phase still preferred to prioritize their own interests by offering cooperation to take advantage of the opportunity for personal gain. Even though they showed less willingness to cooperate, these participants seemingly felt obligated to take the risk of their previous opponents free-riding, and themselves receiving nothing in return, and thus only benefitting their counterparts. Moreover, when the context implied that contributions by participants would benefit both themselves and their opponents, we observed that outcome feedback had no significant impact on either participants’ willingness to cooperate or their cooperative behavior toward their previous opponents. This indicates that the subsequent behavior of participants toward their opponents tends to be self-serving or mutually beneficial. These findings extend results from recent studies that stress the need to take competition outcomes into account when attempting to understand how human competitors behave in the context of later risky cooperation