Trusty Ally or Faithless Snake: Modeling the Role of Human Memory and Expectations in Social Exchange

Exchange is a foundational form of human interaction underlying more complex forms of cooperation and collaboration. Exchange scholars have demonstrated that both the structure of exchange relationships, and the cultural logics that govern them influence the benefits that exchange partners contribute and receive. These factors influence behavior by shaping expectations; but, the cognitive process involved in forming expectations over the course of repeated exchanges is less well understood. We introduce a cognitive model of social exchange implemented in ACT-UP, employing instance-based learning (Gonzalez et al. 2003). In this paper, we focus on how the logical structure of exchange relationships influences exchange behaviors by comparing simulation outcomes to experimental data collected by (Molm et al. 2013). We find that the cognitive model is able to replicate well the outcomes of negotiated exchanges but that reciprocal exchanges pose a greater challenge.