Showing papers by "Alexander Peysakhovich published in 2014"

Social Heuristics Shape Intuitive Cooperation

Abstract: Cooperation is central to human societies. Yet relatively little is known about the cognitive underpinnings of cooperative decision-making. Does cooperation require deliberate self-restraint? Or is spontaneous prosociality reined in by calculating self-interest? Here we present a theory of why (and for whom) intuition favors cooperation: cooperation is typically advantageous in everyday life, leading to the formation of generalized cooperative intuitions. Deliberation, by contrast, adjusts behavior towards the optimum for a given situation. Thus, in one-shot anonymous interactions where selfishness is optimal, intuitive responses tend to be more cooperative than deliberative responses. We test this “Social Heuristics Hypothesis” by aggregating across every cooperation experiment using time pressure we conducted over a two-year period (15 studies and 6,910 decisions), as well as performing a novel time pressure experiment. Doing so demonstrates a positive average effect of time pressure on cooperation. We also find substantial variation in this effect, and show that this variation is partly explained by previous experience with one-shot lab experiments.

Social heuristics shape intuitive cooperation

Abstract: Cooperation is central to human societies. Yet relatively little is known about the cognitive underpinnings of cooperative decision making. Does cooperation require deliberate self-restraint? Or is spontaneous prosociality reined in by calculating self-interest? Here we present a theory of why (and for whom) intuition favors cooperation: cooperation is typically advantageous in everyday life, leading to the formation of generalized cooperative intuitions. Deliberation, by contrast, adjusts behaviour towards the optimum for a given situation. Thus, in one-shot anonymous interactions where selfishness is optimal, intuitive responses tend to be more cooperative than deliberative responses. We test this ‘social heuristics hypothesis’ by aggregating across every cooperation experiment using time pressure that we conducted over a 2-year period (15 studies and 6,910 decisions), as well as performing a novel time pressure experiment. Doing so demonstrates a positive average effect of time pressure on cooperation. We also find substantial variation in this effect, and show that this variation is partly explained by previous experience with one-shot lab experiments.

Cooperating with the future

Abstract: An intergenerational cooperation game has been developed to study decision-making regarding resource use: when decisions about resource extraction were made individually the resource was rapidly depleted by a minority of defectors; the resource was sustainably maintained across generations, however, when decisions were made democratically by voting. Cooperation is often seen in experimental economic games because actions can be reciprocated. But this trait is of no help in one of the most important types of cooperation: cooperation with future generations who cannot reciprocate if we refrain from overexploiting their resources. To test the conditions under which cooperation with the future can occur, Oliver Hauser et al. developed a laboratory model of cooperation — the Intergenerational Goods Game (IGG) — that differs from previous games in which selfishness creates social efficiency losses for group members. Instead, selfishness negatively impacts subsequent groups. Experiments involving more than 2,000 subjects demonstrate that when decisions on resource extraction are made individually, the resource is rapidly depleted by defectors. But when participants are forced to vote on how the resource should be exploited, it is exploited sustainably across generations. Voting works for two reasons. It allows a majority of cooperators to constrain a minority of defectors, and as all players receive the same amount after a vote, cooperators need not worry about losing out relative to others. Overexploitation of renewable resources today has a high cost on the welfare of future generations1,2,3,4,5. Unlike in other public goods games6,7,8,9, however, future generations cannot reciprocate actions made today. What mechanisms can maintain cooperation with the future? To answer this question, we devise a new experimental paradigm, the ‘Intergenerational Goods Game’. A line-up of successive groups (generations) can each either extract a resource to exhaustion or leave something for the next group. Exhausting the resource maximizes the payoff for the present generation, but leaves all future generations empty-handed. Here we show that the resource is almost always destroyed if extraction decisions are made individually. This failure to cooperate with the future is driven primarily by a minority of individuals who extract far more than what is sustainable. In contrast, when extractions are democratically decided by vote, the resource is consistently sustained. Voting10,11,12,13,14,15 is effective for two reasons. First, it allows a majority of cooperators to restrain defectors. Second, it reassures conditional cooperators16 that their efforts are not futile. Voting, however, only promotes sustainability if it is binding for all involved. Our results have implications for policy interventions designed to sustain intergenerational public goods.

Humans display a ‘cooperative phenotype’ that is domain general and temporally stable

Abstract: Understanding human cooperation is of major interest across the natural and social sciences. But it is unclear to what extent cooperation is actually a general concept. Most research on cooperation has implicitly assumed that a person’s behaviour in one cooperative context is related to their behaviour in other settings, and at later times. However, there is little empirical evidence in support of this assumption. Here, we provide such evidence by collecting thousands of game decisions from over 1,400 individuals. A person’s decisions in different cooperation games are correlated, as are those decisions and both self-report and real-effort measures of cooperation in non-game contexts. Equally strong correlations exist between cooperative decisions made an average of 124 days apart. Importantly, we find that cooperation is not correlated with norm-enforcing punishment or non-competitiveness. We conclude that there is a domain-general and temporally stable inclination towards paying costs to benefit others, which we dub the ‘cooperative phenotype’.

Humans Display a 'Cooperative Phenotype' that is Domain General and Temporally Stable

Abstract: Understanding human cooperation is of major interest across the natural and social sciences. But it is unclear to what extent cooperation is actually a general concept. Most research on cooperation has implicitly assumed that a person’s behavior in one cooperative context is related to their behavior in other settings, and at later times. However, there is little empirical evidence in support of this assumption. Here, we provide such evidence by collecting thousands of game decisions from over 1,400 individuals. A person’s decisions in different cooperation games are correlated, as are those decisions and both self-report and real-effort measures of cooperation in non-game contexts. Equally strong correlations exist between cooperative decisions made an average of 124 days apart. Importantly, we find that cooperation is not correlated with norm-enforcing punishment or non-competitiveness. We conclude that there is a domain-general and temporally stable inclination toward paying costs to benefit others, which we dub the ‘cooperative phenotype’.

Recency, records and recaps: learning and non-equilibrium behavior in a simple decision problem

Abstract: Nash equilibrium takes optimization as a primitive, but suboptimal behavior can persist in simple stochastic decision problems. This has motivated the development of other equilibrium concepts such as cursed equilibrium and behavioral equilibrium. We experimentally study a simple adverse selection (or “lemons”) problem and find that learning models that heavily discount past information (i.e., display recency bias) explain patterns of behavior better than Nash, cursed, or behavioral equilibrium. Providing counterfactual information or a record of past outcomes does little to aid convergence to optimal strategies, but providing sample averages (“recaps”) gets individuals most of the way to optimality. Thus, recency effects are not solely due to limited memory but stem from some other form of cognitive constraints. Our results show the importance of going beyond static optimization and incorporating features of human learning into economic models used in both understanding phenomena and designing market institutions.

Recency, Records and Recaps: Learning and Non-Equilibrium Behavior in a Simple Decision Problem

Abstract: Nash equilibrium takes optimization as a primitive, but suboptimal behavior can persist in simple stochastic decision problems. This has motivated the development of other equilibrium concepts such as cursed equilibrium and behavioral equilibrium. We experimentally study a simple adverse selection (or “lemons†) problem and find that learning models that heavily discount past information (i.e. display recency bias) explain patterns of behavior better than Nash, cursed or behavioral equilibrium. Providing counterfactual information or a record of past outcomes does little to aid convergence to optimal strategies, but providing sample averages (“recaps†) gets individuals most of the way to optimality. Thus recency effects are not solely due to limited memory but stem from some other form of cognitive constraints. Our results show the importance of going beyond static optimization and incorporating features of human learning into economic models.

How to commit (if you must): Commitment contracts and the dual-self model

Abstract: This paper studies how dual-self (Fudenberg and Levine, 2006) decision-makers can use commitment technologies to combat temptation and implement long-run optimal actions. I consider three types of commitment technologies: carrot contracts (rewards for ‘good’ behavior financed by borrowing from future consumption), stick contracts (self imposed fines for ‘bad’ behavior) and binding commitment. I compare the welfare implications of these contracts and show that dual-self decision-makers strictly prefer to use carrots instead of either sticks or binding commitments. This is for several reasons: sticks are highly vulnerable to trembles (while carrots are not), sticks and binding commitments create a temptation to cancel them (while carrots do not), and finally carrots allow easy tradeoffs between commitment and flexibility (while sticks and binding commitments do not).