Social Decision Making Flashcards
Social Dilemmas are a situation in whichā¦
each decision maker has a course of actions that may yield superior outcomes for the self
* but if all choose this strategy, all end up worse off them if they had cooperated
in social dilemma what is in conflict with one another
self interest conflicts with collective interest
what can conflict be?
social traps and social fences
what is a social trap?
oneās actions which benefit the self -> cost to the collective
what is a social fence?
one actions which are costly to the self -> benefit the collective
what is the rational self interest model?
humans should optimise outcomes for the self by making rational decisions over the collective
- homo economicus model of human behaviour
what does the rational self interest model not account for?
- when and why do humans contribute to the collective?
- How does society address the free rider problemā the ability for individuals to benefit from collective efforts without contributing (question is how do we contribute to the whole without having our contributions being taken advantage of by free riders)?
Tomasello (2014) suggests humans as ultrasocial. What does this mean?
Humans are uniquely social
what have we likely evolved for?
as a consequence of challenges to foraging (ācollaborate or dieā) OR as a consequence of needing to collaborate with a large group
the idea of us evolving for collaboration with large group maps onto which social psychological ideas?
- interdependent collaboration
- group culture emergence
_ cooperate more then _
humans cooperate more than non-human primates
what is different between human and non-human primates?
- humans uniquely punish free riders
- children apply some form of distributive justice
- human intervene as a third-party in response to norm violations -> even when youāre not directly affected
- humans seem intrinsically motivated to help others
if humans seem intrinsically motivated to help others, what does this suggest facilitating?
cooperation
what are the 4 key mechanisms of cooperation?
- reciprocity
- indirect reciprocity
- fairness
- punishment
what is direct reciprocity?
āI help you, you help meā
why does cooperation come at a risk?
we may contribute to the collective, but if others do not we will pay a cost
how do we ensure both individuals have good outcomes?
strategic cooperation
what are āeconomic gamesā used in game theoretic paradigm?
interactive games between participants that bring social dilemmas into the lab allowing us to study social decision-making in a controlled manner
how does the prisoner dilemma come to be?
both A and B have the choices to either:
* cooperate and refuse to talk (as to not turn either person in)
* defect and testify against your co-conspirator
what do people cooperate and when do they defect in the prisonerās dilemma?
situations and individual differences
social decision-making varies in terms of?
- number of people involved
- choices you have in a given situation
- whether youāll interact with that person again
what do economic games vary depending on?
- number of players
- opportunities on order of plan
- number of rounds
what is a downside of the prisonerās dilemma?
while environment is stimulated, it is not an exact real-world interaction
what is an iterated prisoner dilemma?
played repeatedly by the same participants
why is a iterated prisoner dilemma useful?
helps players learn about behavioural tendencies of their counterparts
how did the prisoner dilemma work?
repeated rounds of the prisonerās dilemma against a stimulated other
individual differences were measured and predetermined by a prior task, what are the three individual difference conditions?
- individualists
- cooperators
- competitiors
individualists
maximise gain for self
cooperators
maximize gain for each player/collective
competitors
maximize relative gain for self/focused on beating the other person
what were the three behaviour conditions (*they played either of these three conditions)
- totally cooperating
- totally defecting
- tit-for-tat
what is the tit-for-tat strategy
start cooperative and then respond in kind to the other personās actions (match the other playerās last play)
what did they find for individualists?
worked best for tit-for-tat
why did individualists work better on tit-for-tat?
- kept cooperating because then the confederate would, but didnāt cooperate very well when they knew the confederate was just going to cooperate every time because then they could defect and make more money.
- when confederate defected, so did the participant
what did they find for cooperators?
cooperating or tit-for-tat strategy -> best strategy here is tit-for-tat (but proportion cooperating is highest for cooperating) because regardless of who the person is, youāll end up okay
what did they find for competitors?
always defect so doesnāt matter which strategy to the confederate uses
what does the iterate prisonerās dilemma suggest?
direct reciprocity strategy can work to your benefit regardless of cooperative nature of the other individual
but what happens beyond tit-for-tat / limitations?
- direct reciprocity not always possible
- decision to cooperate are not always simultaneous
- do not always have equivalent options
- they involve more than two people
what is upstream indirect reciprocity?
balancing out across the community even if youāre not a direct recipient
[āI help you, you help someone else.ā]
what is downstream reciprocity?
even though, itās not direct, there is still a balancing out of contributions
[āI help you, someone else helps meā]
in a direct reciprocity game where each player receives Ā£3 at the beginning of the game.
- For each round players paired off: one player a DONOR and one player a RECEIVER
- DONOR could choose to give Ā£.50 (the gift was multiplied and then given to the * RECEIVER -> so collectively, you would earn more money).
- Players told that they would never encounter the same RECEIVER again (to rule out direct reciprocity).
- Players have an image score (for the donor to decide whether to give you money or not) which increased by one point when they gave and decreased by one point when they didnāt.
- The RECEIVERās image score appears to DONORS when they were making their decisions.
- At the end of the game, you get to keep your earnings.
What did they find?
- Donors more likely to donate when the receiverās image score was higher than average
- Donor with a low image score were more likely to donate something and thereby improve their own image score
what does the indirect reciprocity game conclude over all?
- generosity was costly initially but paid off in the long run. -> by the end of the game image score was strongly correlated with earnings
- individuals with a better image score also earned more in a subsequent prisonerās dilemma (i.e. direct reciprocity) game -> higher image score, more likely to win the game (transferred overt to benefit you in an (in)direct reciprocity game
DEMONSTRATES THE CRITICAL ROLE OF REPUTATION IN FACILITATING COOPERATION
fairness norms are a power source of _ _
social influence
what game illustrates violations of fairness norms?
ultimatum game
(Guth, Schmittberger, and Schwarze, 1982) what is the ultimatum game?
- A receives an initial endowment of money
- A divides the money as see fit and offers a part of the money to player B
- B can accept or reject the offer
- If Player B rejects the offer, no one gets any money (if you accept then you get the money that you were told you would explicitly get).
What was the Payoff of the Ultimatum Game
The bigger offer A gives, the more B makes, while the less money, the less B makes
* If B rejects itās a flat 0 for anybody
What is the rational response in the ultimatum game?
B accepts any offer above 0 -> puts player B in the situation of evaluating situation fairness, and acting against their own individual earning to enforce fairness norms
what happens in one shot games?
- even in one-shot games, recipients do not behave as ārational agentsā, rejecting unfair offers, -> 50/50 split, acceptance rate is 100% but as the participant As offer goes down and split becomes uneven, participant B is less likely to accept the offer -> acceptance rates decrease
- āFirst playersā make offers accordingly.
- BUT STILL HIGHER IF PLAYER IS A COMPUTER -> not as much as a social aspect
how many cultures vary in this game
different levels of first offers
what is the emotional response to fairness?
- people perceive unfair others as less likeable, less agreeable and even less attractive than fair people
- Emotionally, people respond to unfair others with disgust, anger, and sometimes sadness.
- People also respond to fairness violations aggressively
what is the public goods game?
Variant used to examine trust, cooperation and reputation-building in groups.
1. Everyone gets an endowment
2. Everyone puts as many tokens in the pot as they choose/or keep it for themselves.
3. The pot is multiplied by a factor (>1 and <# of players).
4. Pot is split up again/proceeds are shared -> more put in, the more you get back from the pot.
What was found from the pay off matrix?
- defect = make more money than anyone else -> free-riding
- if everyone defects, youāll make the least money possible
In a situation where individuals had the opportunity to punish other plays half way through the game (round 11/20) where the individual punishing would lose money just to see the violation / law enforced on the punished individual.
How much do you think they will contribute to the share pot and will participants pay to punish? What did they find?
- contributors decline over time until punishment is added
- even when punishment is cost (i.e., players must spend money to punish others), people are willing to do it and go back to giving. -> but a willing to sacrifice their earnings to enforce this norm
- Punishment dramatically increases contributions to the public good.
When participants watched other (two participants) play prisonerās dilemma games; once they learn the outcomes they can pay to punish.
conditions: the defection/cooperation of each player in the round -> what does the witness choose to pay to do? Do they pay their own money to punish one of the two participants, depite being one of the third party.
measure: Proportion of trials in which they pay to punish.
What did they find?
- people are even willing to pay to punish when there are merely a witness to unfair behaviour -> more likely to punish a defector when they defect against a co-operator (and just a defector in general). -> despite having no direct gain, that itās annoying to see a fairness violation that itās worth a little a bit of money to see someone (free rider/defector) punished.
how do norms for fairness drive behaviour
beyond ārational self interestā would predict.
fairness violations elicitā¦?
powerful emotional and behavioural responses.
people will incurā¦
a cost to punish others for unfair behavior, even if they are merely third parties to the behaviour.
*influence oneās decision to act in collective versus self-interest in a given interaction
In an interated public group game and where participants were either in a prosocial or proself condition.
Confederate conditions: no confederate, presence of high status consistent contributor, presence of a low status consistent contributor.
Measure: Probability of contribution per round
What did they find?
- contributions remained high in groups with consistent contributors -> collectively earned more
- consistent contributors ultimately made more money than members of groups with consistent contributors
- additionally, there was an additive effect of status, whereby high status consistent contributors hd a stronger effect
- motivational disposition of the group did not make a difference
What about a cooperative cascade? In a series of six public good games with different groups of 4 individuals.
Punishment condition: with and without the opportunity to punish
Analysis: the relationship of each individualās behaviour with othersā behaviour across time and across group -> looks at interactions between groups and how your behaviour i.e, with the first group, if youāre generous, does generousity spread through the entire community indirectly -> is there a cascade of cooperation across time in between groups even when the person you interacted with is long gone, does it continue to be affected by your behaviour?
i.e. do you exhibit the same behaviour when interacting with lucas, indirectly influence lucas behaviour with erika. Does it effect people in whom youāve never interacted?
What did they find?
the contribution of one individual in an interaction influences the other individualās behaviour in the subsequent round
- each contribution predicts the next cooperation -> more A gives B, the more B gives C in the next round
- people tend to give more in public good games when punishment is an option
what happens when punishment is an option?
people tend to give more in a public good game
the influence of one individual cooperative behaviour influences others at further degrees of separate, an indirect effect has been found with up toā¦?
3 degrees of separation
* influencing behaviour -> how much this contribution predicts a future contribution
what does it mean by 3 degrees of separation?
individuals affect others, with whom they had no direct contact over time -> this persists up to 3 groups forwards even gayer they are no longer interacting
what is the propagation of cooperation?
- when an individual cooperates with another individual, it tends to influence the second individual in future interactions
- the original individualās cooperative influence persists over time and across the social network
what drives helping behaviours?
it might be empathic pathways to helping
is all prosocial behaviour cooperative?
no.
what is pure altruism?
helping someone else, even when it is risky, without any reward
what are empathy-related processes?
(emotional) empathy: inferences about othersā affective states (mood, emotion, pain etc.)
perspective taking / cognitive empathy / theory of mind: inferences about otherās mental states (thoughts, beliefs and motivations etc.)
^ related but disocciable
do you have to have deficits in both emotional and cognitive empathy?
nope, can have deficits in a single one or both, but they are related to each other in some way
describe the pathway to helping
feel empathy for someone (and enough motivation to help them, you have comparison -> helping behaviour
BUT empathy can cause you empathetic stress, fleeing the situation and experiencing stress/burnout
perspective taking can influence helping -> understand perspective to help them -> affects empathy -> understanding cognitive details can help you understand what they are thinking and feeling
Or perspective taking can cause Alexlthymia leading to empathetic distress and burnout
what is alexthymia?
the inability to recognize or describe oneās own emotion
A recent study looked at the affective pathway to helping. They examined the relationship between empathy and helping in a. real world sample of members of a āhelping professionā.
Participants: 7,500 physicians
Predictive measures: a battery of personality questionnaires
* Empathic concern
* Perspective taking
* Altruistic intentions - intention to help others
* Empathic distress
* Alexithymia - ability to label oneās emotions (less youāre able to label your emotions, less able you are to use empathy as a tool to help others)
Outcome measures:
* Compassion satisfaction
* Burnout
* Secondary trauma
What did they find?
Empathetic distress (negative feeling from witnessing stress) -> more likely to experience burnout
Alexithymia -> weakly predicted burnout but secondary traumatic stress as well
Does past suffering āharden heartsā (less compassionate) or facilitate helping behaviours? -> looking at the role of experience
Study 1:
Participants: 254 online respondents
Predictive questionnaires:
* adverse life experiences (injury, violence, disaster, etc.)
* empathic concern (from the IRI)
* perspective taking (from the IRI)
* dispositional compassion (DPES)
Behavioural measure: donation to the Red Cross ($.25 to $1.00)
What did they find?
- those who experience adversity are more able to engage in prosocial cognitive mechanisms -> predicts empathic concerns towards others -> empathetic concern predicted the extent to which someone was compassionate and motivated to help an individual (dispositional compassion) but there was no relationship between DC and perspective taking -> DC predicted actual helping in terms of a charitiable donation
- evidence supports general model and adds piece about individual adversity and how it facilitates helping behaviour
When replicating it with a confederate who had a bunch of tasks to complete yet fell ill -> looking at whether participant would help confederate complete the task
What did they find?
life adversity increase perspective taking and empathetic concern which predicted a disposition (towards helping people) compassion, state compassion and real time helping the confederate
What is Helping Behaviour facilitated by?
empathetic responses
but how can we determine if helping actually occurs?
critical moderators
