Reputation Matters Less Than Game Labels in Shaping Cooperation
The study looked at how people's decisions in a game called the Prisoner's Dilemma were influenced by different labels. They found that the labels given to the game had a bigger impact on whether players cooperated or betrayed their partners than the players' reputations did. This was true for both American college students and Israeli pilots. The results suggest that how a situation is described can have a strong effect on people's behavior, more so than what others think of them.