When deciding whether to engage in a conflict, individuals must assess how likely they are to win. Research has shown that when individuals are unlikely to win a fight they see their opponents as physically larger. This project tests whether cues of ingroup cooperativeness are used as an indication that one will succeed in a conflict with an outgroup member. In two experiments, ingroup cooperativeness is manipulated by having subjects play a public goods game with either a cooperative or a selfish ingroup. This manipulation did not affect perceptions of an outgroup member's physical size, regardless of whether the groups were real (Study 1 – university affiliation) or minimal (Study 2 – over- or under-estimators). In Study 1, the manipulation appears to not have been an effective cue to ingroup cooperativeness. In Study 2, the outgroup may not have been sufficiently threatening to elicit assessments of the likelihood of winning a conflict. To test whether ingroup cooperativeness plays a role in decisions to engage in conflict, future studies should address the limitations in the present studies.
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