Publication in JEBO
Cooperation fosters moral duty toward partners, but not outsiders, a U.S. experiment by Alexander W. Cappelen, Varun Gauri and Bertil Tungodden finds — with Republicans valuing this bond less than non-Republicans.
This study examines whether cooperation, understood as interdependent work for mutual benefit, creates moral obligations to help unlucky partners. In a large-scale experiment with over 6,000 U.S. workers and 1,015 spectators from a representative sample, the authors varied whether workers produced independently or through cooperation, and whether redistribution occurred within the same group or between groups. Spectators decided how much to transfer from a lucky worker, who kept their earnings, to an unlucky worker, who lost theirs. The results show that cooperation increases transfers and reduces the likelihood of giving nothing, but only when the two workers had cooperated within the same group. Cooperation did not affect transfers between groups, indicating that it is seen as creating relationship-specific, rather than general, moral obligations. Group membership alone was not enough to generate such obligations; in fact, without cooperation, spectators often gave more between groups, possibly to reduce inequality between them. A striking political divide emerged: non-Republicans were strongly influenced by cooperation, whereas Republicans showed no significant change. These findings suggest that cooperation shapes redistribution attitudes, reinforces in-group help, and aligns with Rawls’ view that obligations of distributive justice arise among those who cooperate for mutual advantage. They also offer insight into the partisan divide on redistribution and the asymmetry in willingness to help fellow citizens versus foreigners.