Testing Theories about Ethnic Markers: Ingroup Accent Facilitates Coordination, Not Cooperation.

In recent years, evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists have debated whether ethnic markers have evolved to solve adaptive problems related to interpersonal coordination or to interpersonal cooperation. In the present study, we add to this debate by exploring how individuals living in a modern society utilize the accents of unfamiliar individuals to make social decisions in hypothetical economic games that measure interpersonal trust, generosity, and coordination. A total of 4603 Danish participants completed a verbal-guise study administered over the Internet.