Market exchange and the ideologies that accompany it pervade human social interaction. How does this affect people’s beliefs about themselves, each other, and human nature? Here we describe market cognition as social inferences and behaviors that are intensified by market contexts. We focus on prosociality and two countervailing ways in which market cognition can affect it. On the one hand, marketplaces incentivize individuals to behave prosocially in order to be chosen as exchange partners—thereby generalizing cooperation and trust beyond group boundaries. On the other hand, markets encourage a view of people as self-interested and can thus taint people’s interpretation of prosocial actions and erode more communal forms of cooperation. We close by considering how market cognition can become self-fulfilling, altering relationships, communities, and cultural norms.

市场交换及其伴随的意识形态遍布人类的社会互动。这如何影响人们对自己，彼此以及人性的信念？这里我们描述市场认知作为因市场环境而加剧的社会推断和行为。我们专注于亲社会性和市场认知可以影响它的两种对立方式。一方面，市场激励个人以行为为目的以被选为交换伙伴，从而使合作和信任超出了群体界限。另一方面，市场鼓励人们将人们视为利己主义，从而污染人们对亲社会行为的理解，并侵蚀更多的社区合作形式。最后，我们考虑了市场认知如何能够实现自我，改变人际关系，社区和文化规范。