Does syntactic alignment predict cooperation? A corpus study of the prisoner’s dilemma

Abstract

The cooperative nature of human communication is widely accepted as a fact at least since Grice. In this study, we investigate whether a form of linguistic cooperation – structural alignment – correlates with cooperative behaviour. Some evidence suggests that structural alignment is sensitive to extralinguistic factors such as power or status. The opposite relation remains largely unexplored, though some evidence points to such tendencies: lexical alignment can induce pro-social behaviour. It is therefore probable that similar relations hold between linguistic alignment and cooperative behaviour. This study investigates transcripts from Golden Balls, a TV show in which participants face a prisoner's dilemma scenario at the end of the game. Crucially, the contestants make their choice solely on the basis of prior interaction with other players. The results of our study suggest that participants are more likely to split when their magnitude of alignment is greater.