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Journal Article•DOI•

Conditional cooperation: Type stability across games

Michael Eichenseer1, Johannes Moser1•
University of Regensburg1
01 Mar 2020-Economics Letters (North-Holland)-Vol. 188, pp 108941
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the within subject stability of cooperation preferences in a one-shot public goods game and a sequential prisoner's dilemma game, and they find that the prisoner-s dilemma performs well in identifying conditional cooperators while it is only an imperfect tool for identifying selfish types.
About: This article is published in Economics Letters.The article was published on 2020-03-01 and is currently open access. It has received 3 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Public goods game & Dilemma.

Summary (2 min read)

Jump to: [1 Introduction] – [2.1 Protocol] – [2.2 Sequential Prisoner’s Dilemma (SPD)] – [2.3 Sequential Public Goods Game (FGF)] – [3 Results] – [3.2 Relationship between classification methods] and [4 Summary and conclusion]

1 Introduction

  • One of the main contributions of behavioral economics is to establish the behavioral relevance of another type beyond the purely payoff-maximizing “homo oeconomicus”, named “homo reciprocans”, who represents a large fraction of the population.
  • If a researcher needs to determine behavioral types of subjects in the lab, there are essentially two methods available to him.
  • For a researcher, the question arises whether using the simpler method is sufficient for type classification as it may save time and reduce cognitive load for the participants.
  • Section 3 presents and discusses their results.

2.1 Protocol

  • The experiment was conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk henceforth) in December 2018 using a sample of MTurk experienced US residents.
  • In total, 232 participants took part in the experiment earning $2.85 on average with an average completion time of approximately 13 minutes.
  • This results in 21 questions plus an unconditional contribution question for the role as first-mover.

2.2 Sequential Prisoner’s Dilemma (SPD)

  • Each player can choose between actions SEND (S) and KEEP (K).
  • Figure 1 depicts the structure of the game in extensive form including the resulting final payoffs in POINTS (worth $0.05 each).
  • All subjects state decisions for both being Player 1 and 2 (strategy method).
  • They are randomly allocated to one of these roles at the end of the experiment and paid accordingly.
  • 4The first action is played when Player 1 chooses SEND and the second action is played when Player 1 chooses KEEP.

2.3 Sequential Public Goods Game (FGF)

  • For the conditional contributions task in FGF, the authors used an adapted version of the procedure of Fischbacher, Gächter, and Fehr (2001).
  • As a second-mover, subjects condition their contribution gi on the average contribution (rounded to the next integer) of the first-movers which results in a conditional contribution path.
  • For the type classification, only the contribution table of a subject is considered.
  • Recently, there have been two proposals to refine the classification based on Fischbacher, Gächter, and Fehr (2001): (i) the method of Thöni and Volk (2018), which is based on the Pearson correlation coefficient and (ii) the method of Fallucchi, Luccasen, and Turocy (2018), which is based on hierarchical clustering.
  • They have in common that they entail a behavioral type whose description comes close to the altruist in SPD : the unconditional cooperator (UC) in Thöni and Volk (2018) and the unconditional high type (UHC) in Fallucchi, Luccasen, and Turocy (2018).

3 Results

  • 1 Contribution paths in FGF by SPD type.
  • As a first step in their data analysis, the authors provide a visual inspection to see whether there is a systematic relationship between behavioral types in SPD and contribution paths in FGF which follow from which follow from the subjects’ conditional contributions.
  • Columns OLS(1) and Tobit(1) assume a common slope of all types in the average contribution of others (ACO) - and only different intercepts - whereas OLS(2) and Tobit(2) take different slopes for different SPD types into account.
  • Both regressions OLS(2) and Tobit(2) indicate that conditional cooperators show a significantly larger reaction to others’ contributions compared to the reference category of selfish types.

3.2 Relationship between classification methods

  • The authors now investigate the relationship between the discrete behavioral types classified by SPD and FGF in the refinements of Thöni and Volk (2018) and Fallucchi, Luccasen, and Turocy (2018).
  • Table 4 reports the number and percentage of subjects falling into each possible combination of the two methods in a contingency table.
  • Comparing the classification of SPD and FGF-T, the authors see that slightly more than half of all subjects (125 of 232) are classified as CC according to both methods, while 11.6% are classified as selfish types in both games (27 of 232).
  • Again, a χ2-test shows that the type classifications are not independent (p < 0.001), indicating a significant relationship between the two methods.
  • When distinguishing between WCC and SCC, the authors observe that in the group of those who are classified as WCC according to FGF-F, only 50% are also classified as CC in SPD, whereas in the group of those who are classified as SCC, almost 80% are classified as CC in SPD.

4 Summary and conclusion

  • The authors provided an online experiment, in which they investigated the consistency of two methods for classifying different cooperation types.
  • The authors further observe that the distinction between WCC and SCC is helpful for identifying CC types in SPD more precisely, since the likelihood for being ‘selfish’ in SPD is considerably higher for WCC types compared to SCC types.
  • This is captured in the significantly larger slope of their conditional cooperation path.
  • If, on the other hand, the focus is on identifying selfish types, the authors cannot offer a clear conclusion.
  • The authors observe many ‘selfish’ subjects in SPD who show cooperative behavioral patterns in FGF.

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Citations
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Dissertation•
Decision-making in complex and uncertain environments - Experimental studies in behavioral economics

[...]

Johannes Moser
11 Dec 2019
TL;DR: In this article, a large body of empirical evidence that people do not always behave according to game theoretic predictions in many economic or social environments is presented, and the authors address issues related to such forms of boundedly rational behavior and non-standard utility maximization.
Abstract: There is a large body of empirical evidence that people do not always behave according to game theoretic predictions in many economic or social environments. Possible deviations from standard-economic behavior can occur when individuals have either (i) non-standard beliefs, which are systematically biased, (ii) non-standard preferences, such as preferences for fairness, or (iii) when they engage in imperfect utility maximization, for example, because of limited attention and only consider salient alternatives in their choice sets (Rabin, 2002). This thesis addresses issues related to such forms of boundedly rational behavior and non-standard utility maximization.

4 citations

Cites background from "Conditional cooperation: Type stabi..."

  • ...4The fourth chapter is based on Eichenseer and Moser (2019a)....

    [...]

  • ...The fourth chapter (Section 5) thematically ties in with the third chapter.4 While, I show in the third chapter that cooperation types have a high predictive 3This chapter is based on Eichenseer and Moser (2019b)....

    [...]

Journal Article•DOI•
Nasty and Noble Notes: Interdependence Structures Drive Self-Serving Gossip.

[...]

Terence D. Dores Cruz, Romy van der Lee, Myriam N. Bechtoldt, Bianca Beersma
25 May 2023-Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
TL;DR: In this article , the authors examined the trustworthiness of gossip in a scenario study (Nsenders = 350, Nobservations = 700) and an interactive laboratory experiment (Nenders = 126; Nobservants = 3024).
Abstract: Much information people receive about others reaches them via gossip. But is this gossip trustworthy? We examined this in a scenario study (Nsenders = 350, Nobservations = 700) and an interactive laboratory experiment (Nsenders = 126; Nobservations = 3024). In both studies, participants played a sequential prisoner's dilemma where a gossip sender observed a target's (first decider's) decision and could gossip about this to a receiver (second decider). We manipulated the interdependence structure such that gossipers' outcomes were equal to targets' outcomes, equal to receivers' outcomes, or independent. Compared to no interdependence, gossip was more often false when gossipers were interdependent with targets but not when interdependent with receivers. As such, false positive gossip (self-serving when interdependent with targets) increased but false negative gossip (self-serving when interdependent with receivers) did not. In conclusion, the interdependence structure affected gossip's trustworthiness: When gossipers' outcomes were interdependent with targets, gossip was less trustworthy.
Journal Article•DOI•
Social Preferences and the Variability of Conditional Cooperation

[...]

Malte Baader, Kyeongtae Lee, Simon Gachter, Martin Sefton
01 Jan 2022-Social Science Research Network
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors examined how the incentive to defect in a social dilemma game affects conditional cooperation and found that most second-movers change strategies between games, consistent with both social preference models and stochastic choice models.
Abstract: IZA. on policy, IZA takes no institutional policy positions. IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. answers the of our time. Our key to between academic research, policymakers ABSTRACT We experimentally examine how the incentive to defect in a social dilemma affects conditional cooperation. In our first study we conduct online experiments in which subjects play eight Sequential Prisoner’s Dilemma games with payoffs systematically varied across games. We find that few second movers are conditionally cooperative (i.e., cooperate if and only if the first mover cooperates) in all eight games. Instead, most second-movers change strategies between games. The rate of conditional cooperation is higher when the own gain from defecting is lower and when the loss imposed on the first mover from defecting is higher. This pattern is consistent with both social preference models and stochastic choice models. To explore which model explains our findings we employ a second study to jointly estimate noise and social preference parameters at the individual level. The majority of our subjects place significantly positive weight on others’ payoffs, supporting the underlying role of social preferences in conditional cooperation.
References
More filters
Journal Article•DOI•
Temporal stability and psychological foundations of cooperation preferences.

[...]

Stefan Volk1, Christian Thöni2, Winfried Ruigrok2•
University of Tübingen1, University of St. Gallen2
01 Feb 2012-Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
TL;DR: This article found that cooperation preferences are very stable at the aggregate level, and, to a smaller degree, at the individual level, allowing them to predict future behavior fairly accurately, providing evidence on the psychological foundations of cooperation preferences.
Abstract: A core element of economic theory is the assumption of stable preferences. We test this assumption in public goods games by repeatedly eliciting cooperation preferences in a fixed subject pool over a period of five months. We find that cooperation preferences are very stable at the aggregate level, and, to a smaller degree, at the individual level, allowing us to predict future behavior fairly accurately. Furthermore, our results provide evidence on the psychological foundations of cooperation preferences. The personality dimension ‘Agreeableness’ is closely related to both the type and the stability of cooperation preferences.

166 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
Leader Punishment and Cooperation in Groups: Experimental Field Evidence from Commons Management in Ethiopia †

[...]

Michael Kosfeld, Devesh Rustagi
01 Feb 2015-The American Economic Review
TL;DR: This article conducted a social dilemma experiment in which real-world leaders can punish group members as a third party, and found that leaders take remarkably different punishment approaches, leading to substantial variation in group cooperation outcomes.
Abstract: We conduct a social dilemma experiment in which real-world leaders can punish group members as a third party. Despite facing an identical environment, leaders are found to take remarkably different punishment approaches. The different leader types revealed experimentally explain the relative success of groups in managing their forest commons. Leaders who emphasize equality and efficiency see positive forest outcomes. Antisocial leaders, who punish indiscriminately, see relatively negative forest outcomes. Our results highlight the importance of leaders in collective action, and more generally the idiosyncratic but powerful roles that leaders may play, leading to substantial variation in group cooperation outcomes. (JEL C93, D03, O13, Q23)

121 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
Strong, Bold, and Kind: Self-Control and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas

[...]

Martin G. Kocher1, Martin G. Kocher2, Martin G. Kocher3, Peter Martinsson3, Kristian Ove R. Myrseth4, Conny Wollbrant3 •
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich1, Queensland University of Technology2, University of Gothenburg3, University of York4
28 Mar 2013-Social Science Research Network
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors developed a model that relates self-control and conflict identification to cooperation patterns in social dilemmas and found that there is evidence for an impulse to be selfish and that cooperative behavior requires self control effort.
Abstract: We develop a model that relates self-control and conflict identification to cooperation patterns in social dilemmas. As predicted, we find in a laboratory public goods experiment a robust association between stronger self-control and higher levels of cooperation. This means that there is evidence for an impulse to be selfish and that cooperative behavior requires self-control effort. Free-riders differ from other contributor types only in their tendency not to have identified a self-control conflict in the first place.

55 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
Conditional cooperation: Review and refinement

[...]

Christian Thöni1, Stefan Volk2•
University of Lausanne1, University of Sydney2
01 Oct 2018-Economics Letters
TL;DR: It is found in the combined data set with more than 7000 individual observations that FGF’s original findings are by-and-large stable: conditional cooperation is the predominant pattern; free-riding is frequent, while non-minimal, unconditional cooperation is very rare.

48 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
One Bad Apple? Heterogeneity and Information in Public Good Provision

[...]

Angela C. M. de Oliveira1, Rachel Croson2, Catherine C. Eckel3•
University of Massachusetts Amherst1, Michigan State University2, Texas A&M University3
15 Apr 2009-Social Science Research Network
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify two mechanisms for the effect of selfish players' behavior: selfish players contribute less, and selfish players induce lower contributions from the conditional cooperators, and this effect increases the number of selfish participants.
Abstract: Previous research demonstrates that individuals vary in their social preferences. Less well-understood is how group composition affects the behavior of different social preference types. Does one bad apple really spoil the bunch? This paper exogenously identifies experimental participants’ social preferences, then systematically assigns individuals to homogeneous or heterogeneous groups to examine the impact of ‘bad apples’ on cooperation and efficiency. Consistent with previous research, we find that groups with more selfish types achieve lower levels of efficiency. We identify two mechanisms for the effect. First, the selfish players contribute less. Second, selfish players induce lower contributions from the conditional cooperators, and this effect increases in the number of selfish players. These results are not sensitive to information about the distribution of types in the group.

43 citations

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Frequently Asked Questions (10)
Q1. What have the authors contributed in "Conditional cooperation: type stability across games" ?

In this paper, the authors use an experimental setup to classify cooperation types using a sequential prisoner ’ s dilemma and a one shot sequential public goods game. In these two games, the authors examine the within subject stability of cooperation preferences. Regarding discrete behavioral types, the authors find that the prisoner ’ s dilemma performs well in identifying conditional cooperators while it is only an imperfect tool for identifying selfish types in the public goods game. Their results suggest that subjects classified as conditional cooperators in the prisoner ’ s dilemma match others ’ contributions in the public goods game to a significantly larger degree compared to other types, which indicates a substantial consistency. 

The resulting payoff of player i with initial endowment yi = 20 POINTS is given by:πi = yi − gi + α 4∑j=1gjwhere gi ∈ [0, 20] denotes individual contributions and α = 0.4 is the marginal per capita return (MPCR) of the public good. 

In total, 232 participants took part in the experiment earning $2.85 on average with an average completion time of approximately 13 minutes. 

individuals classified as ‘selfish’ in SPD, are classified as ‘selfish’ according to FGF-T only in around 34.6% of the cases. 

Compared to subjects classified as ‘selfish’ in SPD, contributions of ‘conditional cooperators’ (CC) have a decisively steeper slope in the contributions of others, i.e., they match others’ contributions to a larger degree. 

The refinement of Thöni and Volk (2018) of FGF (FGF-T hereafter) resembles a theory-driven approach and is based on the Pearson correlation coefficient. 

This indicates that SPD performs well in identifying subjects who have a consistent pattern of conditional cooperation across games, while this does not hold for selfish types. 

Given that a subject is of CC type in SPD, the probability is 93.3% to be classified as CC as well according to FGF-T (refinement of Thöni and Volk, 2018) and 88.8% according to FGF-F (refinement of Fallucchi, Luccasen, and Turocy, 2018), respectively. 

If the authors look at the conditional relative frequencies,we see that conditional on being classified as CC type in SPD, the relative frequency is 88.8% to be classified as either WCC or SCC according to FGF-F. 

By contrast, a subject classified as selfish in SPD is only selfish in 39.7% of the cases according to FGF-F.Starting from FGF-F, a subject sorted in the group of selfish types according to FGF-F, is also selfish in SPD in 72.1% of the cases.