Partner Choice in Action

Prudently choosing who to interact with and who to avoid is an important ability to ensure that we benefit from a cooperative interaction. While the role of others' preferences, attributes, and values in partner choice have been established (Rossetti, Hilbe & Hauser, 2022), much less is known about whether the manner in which a potential partner plans and implements a decision provides helpful cues for partner choice. We used a partner choice paradigm in which participants chose who to partner with in economic games (either prisoners’ dilemma or stag-hunt). Before making their choice between two partners, participants were presented with information about the potential partners’ decision-related actions in another round of that same game. They received either information about the potential partners’ planning during decision making (Experiment 1, N = 144) or action execution during decision implementation (Experiment 2, N = 144). Across both games, participants preferred to interact with those whose action planning or action execution indicated they were making and implementing prosocial decisions (i.e., cooperate or stag) with certainty. This demonstrates that action cues present in either the planning or implementation of economic decisions influence partner choice, by revealing the strength of the social preferences of potential partners. We discuss implications of this finding for human decision-making and perception-action coupling in action understanding.