Article Co-Authored by Assistant Prof. Pınar Uğurlar Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

Assistant Prof. Pınar Uğurlar from the Psychology Program at Özyeğin University has co- authored a research article published in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The article titled “Maintaining cooperation through vertical communication of trust when removing sanctions,” is the result of a collaborative research effort with Ann-Christin Posten (University of Limerick), Joris Lammers (University of Cologne), and Sebastian Kube (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods & University of Bonn).

Previous research in psychology has widely demonstrated that one of the most effective ways to promote cooperation is by monitoring individuals’ behavior and deterring opportunistic actions through sanctions. Furthermore, findings indicate that removing such sanction mechanisms often leads to a rapid decline in cooperative behavior. The recently published study to which Assistant Prof. Uğurlar contributed shows that when sanctions are removed, authorities can significantly mitigate the decline in cooperation by explicitly expressing their trust in the population’s willingness to continue cooperating. This vertical communication of trust emerges as a powerful tool in sustaining collaborative behavior, even in the absence of enforcement measures.

For the full article: https://www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10.1073/pnas.2415010122