Imagining Positive Conversations Can Improve Trust and Cooperation With Others

A positive conversation is any verbal interaction where individuals are considering each others’ perspective, values, and interests. These types of interactions are key toward building healthy relationships and resolving social conflicts.

There is a robust finding that conversation is one of the biggest factors in improving cooperation, our ability to solve social problems in a way that benefits everyone involved and doesn’t just serve the interests of one person or group.

A meta-analysis reviewing 35 years of research on social conflict found that communication was the strongest and most reliable predictor of cooperative behavior, increasing the proportion of cooperation by 40% on average.

Now research shows that we can create a similar effect simply by imagining positive conversations with others, without even having any direct communication.

Imagined group discussions improving cooperation

In a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers conducted experiments finding that imagined group discussions are an effective means of increasing cooperative behavior.

In one experiment, participants engaged in a task known as a “public goods dilemma,” where each individual was called upon to invest in a central fund that would be randomly awarded to one of the participants. Individuals were given 300 pence and were asked how much of their money they would like to invest in the central fund.

It was found that the group of individuals who were told to “Imagine you and your group members reaching a consensus that the best solution to the problem would be to all donate their 300p to the central fund” decided to donate a lot more of their money.

In another experiment, participants engaged in a task known as a “prisoner’s dilemma,” where individuals are rewarded depending on their cooperation and the cooperation of others. The potential outcomes in a simple version of the prisoner’s dilemma include:

• If both parties cooperate, they are equally rewarded.
• If both parties deflect, they both settle for a lesser reward.
• However, if one party cooperates and the other deflects, the one who deflects ends up with a larger reward overall.

In the prisoner’s dilemma, both parties are better overall if they cooperate, but there is a selfish incentive not to cooperate.

Once participants were explained the rules of the prisoner’s dilemma (which involved 6 individuals), they were asked to spend 5 minutes to imagine a group discussion with the other participants regarding the scenario, including:

1) How the group will establish a common understanding of the general principles of the game.

2) Imagine the different viewpoints of the best solution to the problem that you and your group members would put across.

3) Imagine you and your group members discussing the risks involved in the various ways to address the problem.

4) Imagine you and your group members reaching a consensus that the best solution to the problem would be to all choose the cooperative choice.

5) Imagine you and group members each assuring the rest of the group that they can be trusted to follow up on their commitment to choose the cooperative choice.

Just like in the first experiment, individuals in the “Imagined Discussion” group were much more likely to cooperate and choose solutions where everyone benefits overall.

The effect works regardless of the person’s individual motives

We each value “individual needs” vs. “social needs” differently. According to researchers, we can breakdown these differences into 4 main groups:

• Cooperators – people who prefer to maximize joint welfare
• Altruists – people who strive to maximize the others outcomes
• Individualists – people who aim to maximize their individual outcome
• Competitors – people who strive to maximize the difference between their own and others outcomes

Interestingly, the study showed that imagined group discussions positively influenced people to be more cooperative despite their prior individual motives. This shows imagined discussions can have a universal effect on improving people’s cooperative tendencies.

When individuals imagine positive conversations and positive outcomes in their relationships, they are more likely to believe in their plausibility, which prepares them to be more positive and cooperative in their real world relationships.

“Imagined group discussion serves to clarify the nature of the social problem by rendering a cooperative group consensus an accessible source of diagnostic information. In this way, imagined group discussion serves to establish the cognitive groundwork for a cooperative choice.”

The basic idea is that by trying to see a problem from someone else’s perspective, and imagining ways which you can reach a solution that benefits everyone, you influence your willingness to make choices that actually fulfill that reality.

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