scholarly journals Robust Social Decisions

2016 ◽  
Vol 106 (9) ◽  
pp. 2407-2425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Danan ◽  
Thibault Gajdos ◽  
Brian Hill ◽  
Jean-Marc Tallon
Keyword(s):  
Social Preferences ◽  
Heterogeneous Beliefs ◽  
Pareto Principle ◽  
Social Decisions ◽  
Suitable Restriction ◽  
Do So

We propose and operationalize normative principles to guide social decisions when individuals potentially have imprecise and heterogeneous beliefs, in addition to conflicting tastes or interests. To do so, we adapt the standard Pareto principle to those preference comparisons that are robust to belief imprecision and characterize social preferences that respect this robust principle. We also characterize a suitable restriction of this principle. The former principle provides stronger guidance when it can be satisfied; when it cannot, the latter always provides minimal guidance. (JEL D71, D81)

A STRAWSON–LEWIS DEFENCE OF SOCIAL PREFERENCES

2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelle de Boer
Keyword(s):  
Social Preference ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
The Other ◽  
Reactive Attitude ◽  
Do So

This paper examines a special kind of social preference, namely a preference to do one's part in a mixed-motive setting because the other party expects one to do so. I understand this expectation-based preference as a basic reactive attitude (Strawson 1974). Given this, and the fact that expectations in these circumstances are likely to be based on other people's preferences, I argue that in cooperation a special kind of equilibrium ensues, which I call a loop, with people's preferences and expectations mutually cross-referring. As with a Lewis-norm, the loop can get started in a variety of ways. It is self-sustaining in the sense that people with social preferences have sufficient reason not to deviate.

scholarly journals Neural mechanisms of social decision-making in the primate amygdala

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (52) ◽  
pp. 16012-16017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve W. C. Chang ◽  
Nicholas A. Fagan ◽  
Koji Toda ◽  
Amanda V. Utevsky ◽  
John M. Pearson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Behavior ◽  
Basolateral Amygdala ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Dictator Game ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Social Decisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Social Decision Making

Social decisions require evaluation of costs and benefits to oneself and others. Long associated with emotion and vigilance, the amygdala has recently been implicated in both decision-making and social behavior. The amygdala signals reward and punishment, as well as facial expressions and the gaze of others. Amygdala damage impairs social interactions, and the social neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) influences human social decisions, in part, by altering amygdala function. Here we show in monkeys playing a modified dictator game, in which one individual can donate or withhold rewards from another, that basolateral amygdala (BLA) neurons signaled social preferences both across trials and across days. BLA neurons mirrored the value of rewards delivered to self and others when monkeys were free to choose but not when the computer made choices for them. We also found that focal infusion of OT unilaterally into BLA weakly but significantly increased both the frequency of prosocial decisions and attention to recipients for context-specific prosocial decisions, endorsing the hypothesis that OT regulates social behavior, in part, via amygdala neuromodulation. Our findings demonstrate both neurophysiological and neuroendocrinological connections between primate amygdala and social decisions.

Pareto principle

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Miller
Keyword(s):  
Pareto Principle ◽  
Social State ◽  
Feasible Alternative ◽  
Pareto Efficient ◽  
Do So

A social state is said to be Pareto-efficient when there is no feasible alternative to it in which at least one individual is better off while no individual is worse off. The Pareto principle tells us to move from Pareto-inefficient to Pareto-efficient states. Suppose a large basket of fruit is shared among a group in some way or another – one apple, two peaches, a dozen cherries each, for instance. If the fruit can be exchanged so that at least some people get more enjoyment from what they have, and no one gets less, the Pareto principle instructs us to do so; indeed, it instructs us to carry on exchanging until no more improvements of this kind are possible.

scholarly journals Social Decoys: Leveraging Choice Architecture to Alter Social Preferences

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda W. Chang ◽  
Mina Cikara
Keyword(s):  
Computational Models ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Decoy Effect ◽  
Relative Preference ◽  
Social Decisions ◽  
Job Candidates ◽  
Asymmetric Dominance ◽  
First Time ◽  
Choice Set

Many of society's most significant social decisions are made over sets of individuals: for example, evaluating a collection of job candidates when making a hiring decision. Rational theories of choice dictate that decision makers' preferences between any two options should remain the same irrespective of the number or quality of other options. Yet people's preferences for each option in a choice set shift in predictable ways as function of the available alternatives. These violations are well documented in consumer behavior contexts: for example, the decoy effect, in which introducing a third inferior product changes consumers' preferences for two original products. The current experiments test the efficacy of social decoys and harness insights from computational models of decision-making to examine whether choice set construction can be used to change preferences in a hiring context. Across seven experiments (N = 6312) we find that participants have systematically different preferences for the exact same candidate as a function of the other candidates in the choice set (Experiments 1a-1d, 2) and the salience of the candidate attributes under consideration (Experiments 2, 3a, 3b). Specifically, compromise and (often) asymmetric-dominance decoys increased relative preference for their yoked candidates when candidates were counter-stereotypical (e.g., high warmth/low competence male candidate). More importantly, we demonstrate for the first time that we can mimic the effect of a decoy in the absence of a third candidate by manipulating participants' exposure to candidates' attributes: balanced exposure to candidates' warmth and competence information significantly reduced bias between the two candidates.

Who Will Do It? Volunteering to Change Cooperation Rules in a Heterogeneous Population

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klarita Gërxhani ◽  
Beate Volker ◽  
Jacqueline van Breemen
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Heterogeneous Population ◽  
Collective Good ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
First Order ◽  
Rule Change ◽  
Experimental Findings ◽  
Do So ◽  
Contribution Level

Abstract We study whether and when a second-order collective action problem, like the change of existing formal rules governing cooperation, can be resolved to ultimately solve first-order collective good dilemmas. We do so by examining the conditions under which individuals change cooperation rules when both their material incentives to cooperate and their social preferences for outcome distributions differ. Our experimental findings show that proselfs who benefit the most from cooperation are most likely to initiate a rule change to a higher minimum contribution level. Regarding prosocials, we find that their underlying motives in favour or against this rule change vary depending on their relative earnings’ position. If they are ‘wealthy’, that is, they have a higher earnings potential, they are more concerned about equality. When they are relatively ‘less wealthy’, they seem to care more about enhancing collective outcomes.

Social Decisions from Description Compared to Experience Rely on Different Cognitive and Neural Processes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Deréky ◽  
Todd Anthony Hare ◽  
Daniella Laureiro-Martínez ◽  
Stefano Brusoni
Keyword(s):  
Social Preferences ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Societal Needs ◽  
Social Decisions ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Learning Conditions ◽  
Neuroimaging Data ◽  
Information Sampling ◽  
Social Decision Making

Abstract Social decisions reveal the degree to which people consider societal needs relative to their own desires. Although many studies showed how social decisions are taken when the consequences of actions are given as explicit information, little is known about how social choices are made when the relevant information was learned through repeated experience. Here, we compared how these two different ways of learning about the value of alternatives (description versus experience) impact social decisions in 147 healthy young adult humans. Using diffusion decision models, we show that, although participants chose similar outcomes across the learning conditions, they sampled and processed information differently. During description decisions, information sampling depended on both chosen and foregone rewards for self and society, while during experience decisions sampling was proportional to chosen outcomes only. Our behavioral data indicate that description choices involved the active processing of more information. Additionally, neuroimaging data from 40 participants showed that the brain activity was more closely associated with the information sampling process during description relative to experience decisions. Overall, our work indicates that the cognitive and neural mechanisms of social decision making depend strongly on how the values of alternatives were learned in addition to individual social preferences.

scholarly journals Experimental Investigations of Social Preferences

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
James F. Woodward
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Experimental Investigations ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Systematic Effects ◽  
Recent Experimental Work ◽  
Do So

This article surveys some of the philosophical issues raised by recent experimental work on so-called social preferences. More broadly, its focus is on experimental explorations of the conditions under which people behave co-operatively or in a prosocial way or, alternatively, fail to do so. These experiments raise a number of fascinating methodological and interpretive issues that are of central importance both to economics and to social and political philosophy. It is commonly claimed that the experiments demonstrate that (at least some) people not only have selfish preferences concerning their own material payoffs, but that they also have preferences concerning the well-being of others—that is, social preferences. Moreover, the contention is not just that some subjects have such social preferences, but that these can have large and systematic effects on behavior, both in the experiments under discussion and in real life contexts outside the laboratory.

Holding replication studies to mainstream standards of evidence

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duane T. Wegener ◽  
Leandre R. Fabrigar
Keyword(s):  
Replication Studies ◽  
Replication Research ◽  
Standards Of Evidence ◽  
Do So

AbstractReplications can make theoretical contributions, but are unlikely to do so if their findings are open to multiple interpretations (especially violations of psychometric invariance). Thus, just as studies demonstrating novel effects are often expected to empirically evaluate competing explanations, replications should be held to similar standards. Unfortunately, this is rarely done, thereby undermining the value of replication research.

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