Personality and Social Psychology Review 2015, Vol. 19(3) 277–302 © 2014 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc. Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1088868314553709 pspr.sagepub.com Article There is growing interest in the theoretical and empirical links between personality psychology and economics. This has given rise to an integrated framework for the study of behavioral heterogeneity from which several avenues of research have emerged (Ferguson, Heckman, & Corr, 2011a; Heckman, 2011). These include the development of eco- nomic models of personality to describe the evolution of traits and their interaction with preferences and incentives (Almlund, Duckworth, Heckman, & Kautz, 2011; Borghans, Duckworth, Heckman, & ter Weel, 2008; Ferguson et al., 2011a). Other research has examined the parallels between personality constructs and economic preference parameters (e.g., risk, temporal, and social preferences; Becker, Deckers, Dohmen, Falk, & Kosse, 2012). There is also increasing rec- ognition of the impact of traits on real-world socioeconomic outcomes (Almlund et al., 2011; Borghans et al., 2008; Rustichini, DeYoung, Anderson, & Burks, 2012; see also Ferguson, Heckman, & Corr, 2011b) One important area where personality psychology and economics intersect concerns the study of individual differ- ences in interpersonal processes captured by economic games. Economic games are social decision-making tasks resembling real-world strategic interactions (Camerer, 2003). They typically feature two or more individuals within an interdependent payoff matrix, who must make decisions given a set of rules and limited information, usually in the absence of knowledge about the other’s intentions. Importantly, individuals’ decisions affect not only their own outcomes, but also the outcomes of others, a defining feature that sets economic games apart from other incentivized deci- sion-making paradigms. Economic games were originally developed within math- ematical theory to analyze strategic decision making among economic agents (von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1944). Later experiments of these games revealed substantial devia- tion of human behavior from conventional economic assump- tions of self-interest and rationality, which has spawned a large literature on the role of social preferences in economic decisions (e.g., Fehr & Schmidt, 1999). These findings also highlighted the psychological and interpersonal processes shaping social economic interactions, including the interplay of emotions, theory of mind, trust, altruism, reciprocity, and retaliation (e.g., Rilling & Sanfey, 2011; Stallen & Sanfey, 2013). Economic games have become widely adopted within 553709PSR XX X 10.1177/1088868314553709Personality and Social Psychology ReviewZhao and Smillie research-article 2014 1 University of Melbourne, Australia Corresponding Author: Kun Zhao, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia. Email: kun.zhao@unimelb.edu.au The Role of Interpersonal Traits in Social Decision Making: Exploring Sources of Behavioral Heterogeneity in Economic Games Kun Zhao 1 and Luke D. Smillie 1 Abstract Economic games are well-established experimental paradigms for modeling social decision making. A large body of literature has pointed to the heterogeneity of behavior within many of these games, which might be partly explained by broad interpersonal trait dispositions. Using the Big Five and HEXACO (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience) personality frameworks, we review the role of personality in two main classes of economic games: social dilemmas and bargaining games. This reveals an emerging role for Big Five agreeableness in promoting cooperative, egalitarian, and altruistic behaviors across several games, consistent with its core characteristic of maintaining harmonious interpersonal relations. The role for extraversion is less clear, which may reflect the divergent effects of its underlying agentic and affiliative motivational components. In addition, HEXACO honesty-humility and agreeableness may capture distinct aspects of prosocial behavior outside the bounds of the Five-Factor Model. Important considerations and directions for future studies are discussed within the emerging personality–economics interface. Keywords economic games, bargaining games, social dilemmas, agreeableness, extraversion, honesty-humility, HEXACO at The University of Melbourne Libraries on November 25, 2015 psr.sagepub.com Downloaded from