Organizational life is rife with cooperative and competitive experiences. I theorize that this inconsistency can reduce prosocial behavior at work. Individuals believe cooperation and competition are contradictory, so the presence of both produces the aversive experience of contradiction. Motivated to minimize this contradiction, they may integrate the information in ways that constrain their perceptions of how cooperative the broader organizational context is, which discourages prosocial behavior. Based on this theory, I hypothesized that being comfortable with contradictions or uncertainty overcomes the tendency to constrain perceived cooperation amid inconsistent cooperation and competition. I found support for these hypotheses across four studies. Paradox mindset—the tendency to value, accept, and be energized by contradictions—weakened the negative effect of competitive experiences on overall perceptions of how cooperative one’s organizational context is (Studies 1A, 1B, and 3). Low levels of cultural uncertainty avoidance similarly moderated the effect of competitive experiences on perceptions of how cooperative the organizational context is in a cross-cultural sample spanning 36 countries (Study 1B). These effects extended to behavior: Paradox mindset enhanced the positive effect of cooperative experiences (Study 2) and weakened the negative effect of competitive experiences (Study 3) on prosocial organizational behaviors. The theory and findings underscore the challenges employees face when navigating inconsistent cooperation and competition and identify pathways for organizations to bolster cooperation.
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