All Together Now: Genes, Interpersonal Touch, and Self‐Conscious Processes Jointly Guide Cooperative Behavior

Cooperation and trust are critical parts of many relationships. However, such relationships are often studied in siloed ways, leading to incomplete explanations of behavior (e.g., from the point of view of a buyer or a seller, but not necessarily both). This paper makes three contributions to broadening this perspective. First, the authors develop a model incorporating individual differences (genetics), environmental (interpersonal touch), and psychological (empathy and trust) elements to shed light on when and how cooperation is influenced in dyadic relationships. Empathy was predicted to be elicited by the interaction of human touch and the COMT gene to induce, in turn, felt trust and cooperative behaviors. Second, the centipede game is used as a behaviorally relevant context to study how and under what conditions players cooperate while competing with each other. The results of a conditional serial mediation demonstrate that cooperative responses are guided by the interaction of touch and the COMT gene, where empathy and trust are mediators. Actual actions of players are recorded and real behaviors explained. In an additional registered experiment, the mediator, empathy, was manipulated to show that it had a positive effect on trust.