scholarly journals Human Cooperation When Acting Through Autonomous Machines

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (9) ◽  
pp. 3482-3487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celso M. de Melo ◽  
Stacy Marsella ◽  
Jonathan Gratch
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Collective Interest ◽  
Intelligent Machines ◽  
Cooperative Society ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Autonomous Machines ◽  
Present Experimental Evidence

Recent times have seen an emergence of intelligent machines that act autonomously on our behalf, such as autonomous vehicles. Despite promises of increased efficiency, it is not clear whether this paradigm shift will change how we decide when our self-interest (e.g., comfort) is pitted against the collective interest (e.g., environment). Here we show that acting through machines changes the way people solve these social dilemmas and we present experimental evidence showing that participants program their autonomous vehicles to act more cooperatively than if they were driving themselves. We show that this happens because programming causes selfish short-term rewards to become less salient, leading to considerations of broader societal goals. We also show that the programmed behavior is influenced by past experience. Finally, we report evidence that the effect generalizes beyond the domain of autonomous vehicles. We discuss implications for designing autonomous machines that contribute to a more cooperative society.

scholarly journals Human Cooperation and the Crises of Climate Change, COVID-19, and Misinformation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul van Lange ◽  
David Gertler Rand
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Evolution Of Cooperation ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Conditional Cooperation ◽  
Collective Interest ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Face ◽  
Climate Crisis

Abstract Contemporary society is facing many pressing challenges, including climate change, Covid-19, and misinformation. Here we illustrate how these three crises are each social dilemmas, characterized by a conflict between short-term self-interest and longer-term collective interest. The climate crisis requires paying costs today to benefit distant others in the future. The Covid-19 crisis requires the less vulnerable to pay costs to benefit the more vulnerable, in the face of great uncertainty. The misinformation crisis requires investing effort to assess truth, as well as resisting the temptation to spread attractive falsehoods. Addressing these crises therefore requires understanding human cooperation. To that end, we present (i) a brief overview of mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation, including mechanisms based on similarity (i.e., kinship, spatial selection, and group selection) and those based on interaction (i.e., direct reciprocity, reputation); (ii) a detailed discussion of how reputation can incentivize cooperation via conditional cooperation and signaling; and (iii) a review of social preferences that undergird the proximate psychology of cooperation, including positive regard for others (i.e., a cooperative orientation to others in general), parochialism (i.e., a cooperative orientation to ingroups, sometimes at a cost to outgroups or the collective as a whole), and egalitarianism (i.e., an orientation that seeks to reduce absolute differences in outcomes for self and others). We then discuss each of the three focal crises facing our society through the lens of cooperation, emphasizing how insights from cooperation research can inform efforts to address these crises.

Doing More With Less: Pragmatic Implementation of Vancomycin Area-Under-the-Curve (AUC) Monitoring

2021 ◽  
pp. 089719002110272
Author(s):  
Joanne Huang ◽  
Jeannie D. Chan ◽  
Thu Nguyen ◽  
Rupali Jain ◽  
Zahra Kassamali Escobar
Keyword(s):  
Quality Improvement ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Therapeutic Drug Monitoring ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Area Under The Curve ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Practical Method ◽  
Therapeutic Drug ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Quality Improvement Process

Universal area-under-the-curve (AUC) guided vancomycin therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is resource-intensive, cost-prohibitive, and presents a paradigm shift that leaves institutions with the quandary of defining the preferred and most practical method for TDM. We report a step-by-step quality improvement process using 4 plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles to provide a framework for development of a hybrid model of trough and AUC-based vancomycin monitoring. We found trough-based monitoring a pragmatic strategy as a first-tier approach when anticipated use is short-term. AUC-guided monitoring was most impactful and cost-effective when reserved for patients with high-risk for nephrotoxicity. We encourage others to consider quality improvement tools to locally adopt AUC-based monitoring.

Talking Behind Your Back: Communication and Team Cooperation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Abbink ◽  
Lu Dong ◽  
Lingbo Huang
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Economics ◽  
Decision Analysis ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Team Communication ◽  
Team Cooperation ◽  
Profit Allocation ◽  
Asymmetric Communication ◽  
Present Experimental Evidence

Communication is one of the most effective devices in promoting team cooperation. However, asymmetric communication sometimes breeds collusion and hurts team efficiency. Here, we present experimental evidence showing that excluding one member from team communication hurts team cooperation; the communicating partners collude in profit allocation against the excluded member, and the latter reacts by exerting less effort. Allowing the partners to reach out to the excluded member partially restores cooperation and fairness in profit allocation, but it does not stop the partners from talking behind that member’s back even when they could have talked publicly. The partners sometimes game the system by tricking the excluded member into contributing but then grabbing all profits for themselves. This paper was accepted by Axel Ockenfels, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

Moral Perceptions of Advised Actions

2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (8) ◽  
pp. 3904-3927 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas C. Coffman ◽  
Alexander Gotthard-Real
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Economics ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Relational Contract ◽  
Suggestive Evidence ◽  
Present Experimental Evidence

Can an organization avoid blame for an unpopular action when an adviser advises it to do it? We present experimental evidence suggesting this is the case—advice to be selfish substantially decreases punishment of being selfish. Further, this result is true despite advisers’ misaligned incentives, known to all: Through a relational contract incentive, advisers are motivated to tell the decision makers what they want to hear. Through incentivized elicitations, we find suggestive evidence that advice moves punishment by affecting beliefs of how necessary the selfish action was. In follow-up treatments, however, we show advice does not decrease punishment solely through a beliefs channel. Advice not only changes beliefs about what happened, but also the perceived morality of it. Finally, in treatments in which advisers are available, the data suggest selfish decision makers act more selfishly. This paper was accepted by Axel Ockenfels, behavioral economics.

scholarly journals The Silent Killer: Consequences of Climate Change and How to Survive Past the Year 2050

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 3757
Author(s):  
Anna Laura Huckelba ◽  
Paul A. M. Van Lange
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Behavioral Change ◽  
Social Dilemma ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The World

There is strong scientific consensus that the climate is drastically changing due to increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and that these changes are largely due to human behavior. Scientific estimates posit that by 2050, we will begin to experience some of the most damaging consequences of climate change, which will only worsen as the world becomes more populated and resources become scarcer. Considerable progress has been made to explore technological solutions, yet useful insights from a psychological perspective are still lacking. Understanding whether and how individuals and groups cope with environmental dilemmas is the first step to combatting climate change. The key challenge is how can we reduce a tendency to inaction and to understand the psychological obstacles for behavioral change that reduce climate change. We provide a social dilemma analysis of climate change, emphasizing three important ingredients: people need to recognize their own impact on the climate, there is conflict between self-interest and collective interests, and there is a temporal dilemma involving a conflict between short-term and longer-term interest. Acknowledging these features, we provide a comprehensive overview of psychological mechanisms that support inaction, and close by discussing potential solutions. In particular, we offer recommendations at the level of individuals, communities, and governments.

scholarly journals Labor Drops: Experimental Evidence on the Return to Additional Labor in Microenterprises

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 202-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suresh de Mel ◽  
David McKenzie ◽  
Christopher Woodruff
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Field Experiment ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Wage Subsidies ◽  
Track Dynamics ◽  
Additional Labor

A field experiment in Sri Lanka provided wage subsidies to randomly chosen microenterprises to test whether hiring additional labor benefits such firms and whether a short-term subsidy can have a lasting impact on firm employment. Using 12 rounds of surveys to track dynamics 4 years after treatment, we find that firms increased employment during the subsidy period. Treated firms were more likely to survive, but there was no lasting impact on employment and no effect on profitability or sales either during or after the subsidy period. There is some heterogeneity in effects; the subsidies have a more durable effect on manufacturers. (JEL C93, J22, J24, J31, J38, O14, O15)

Convergence and intonation: historical evidence from Buenos Aires Spanish

2004 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURA COLANTONI ◽  
JORGE GURLEKIAN
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Italian Immigration ◽  
Early Peak ◽  
Intonational Phrases ◽  
Pitch Accents ◽  
Present Experimental Evidence

In this paper we present experimental evidence showing that Buenos Aires Spanish differs from other Spanish varieties in the realization of pre-nuclear pitch accents and in the final fall in broad focus declarative utterances. Whereas other Spanish varieties have been described consistently as showing late peak alignments, Buenos Aires Spanish displays early peak alignments. The alignment pattern found in Buenos Aires broad focus declarative utterances is not totally foreign to Spanish: it is attested in a quite different function, i.e. to signal contrastive focus. In addition, Buenos Aires Spanish also seems to differ from other Spanish varieties in the realization of the intonation contour in utterance-final intonational phrases, where a pronounced tendency for down-stepped peaks is observed. We argue that these patterns, which emerged at the turn of the twentieth century, and coincided with the peak of Italian immigration, are due to a combination of direct and indirect transfer from Italian. As a result, two intonational systems that were typologically similar before contact took place (Hualde, 2002) became more similar after contact, in what can be interpreted as a case of convergence.

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