Betrayal

Expectations and Cooperation

Cooperation, however, requires shared expectations. In order to receive the benefits of working together, people must operate by an established set of rules and norms. Social contracts, which indicate everyone's responsibilities, must be negotiated to achieve cooperation.

The expectations that underlie cooperation can be directly negotiated, in an explicit manner. For instance, at a societal level, some people's expectations are written into law. In professional life, organizations often spell out explicit policies outlining appropriate codes of conduct. In close relationships, partners can make their expectations clear by establishing specific rules about the types of behavior that are acceptable within their relationship.

Expectations underlying cooperation can also be established through more indirect means and can be implicit in nature. Implicit norms are acquired through a variety of methods, including socialization processes such as modeling other people's behavior, the use of rituals, the telling of stories, or through direct experience with others. For example, through repeated interaction, people can indicate to others what is desired without articulating their specific expectations. If a spouse comes home from work later than expected, their partner may not explicitly address this issue, but rather signal their displeasure through nonverbal displays of disapproval or anger. Through socialization processes and repeated experiences, people implicitly learn what is expected of them across a variety of different situations. Most of the time, implicit norms or expectations operate in the background—outside of conscious awareness. For instance, people are not typically aware of the rules for riding in an elevator, but people nevertheless tend to follow the rules. Again, from a larger societal perspective all the way down to interpersonal relationships, cooperation is possible because people establish and adhere to an elaborate set of norms and expectations.

Although some of the norms that people establish are universal, such as the notion that kindness should be meet with kindness, many of the expectations that people place on each other are influenced by one's culture, group memberships, relational experiences, and personality differences. For instance, in some cultures, the expectation for sexual fidelity in a romantic relationship is less important than in other parts of the world, where infidelity can result in severe forms of punishment. At the individual level, people vary with respect to the expectations that they place on others, especially within their close relationships. Some individuals set unrealistic expectations about an intimate partner's behavior, including the belief that a partner should always be available and always know exactly what the other person is thinking.

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