scholarly journals Selfish learning is more important than fair-minded conditional cooperation in public-goods games

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell Burton-Chellew ◽  
Claire Guérin
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Negligible Effect ◽  
Conditional Cooperation ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Economic Experiments ◽  
Public Goods Games ◽  
Learning Hypothesis ◽  
Evolutionary Explanations

Why does human cooperation often unravel in economic experiments despite a promising start? Previous studies have interpreted the decline as the reaction of disappointed cooperators retaliating in response to lesser cooperators (conditional cooperation). This interpretation has been considered evidence of a uniquely human form of cooperation, motivated by altruistic concerns for fairness and requiring special evolutionary explanations. However, experiments have typically shown individuals information about both their personal payoff and information about the decisions of their groupmates (social information). Showing both confounds explanations based on conditional cooperation with explanations based on individuals learning how to better play the game. Here we experimentally decouple these two forms of information, and thus these two learning processes, in public goods games involving 616 Swiss university participants. We find that payoff information leads to a greater decline, supporting a payoff-based learning hypothesis. In contrast, social information has small or negligible effect, contradicting the conditional cooperation hypothesis. We also find widespread evidence of both confusion and selfish motives, suggesting that human cooperation is maybe not so unique after all.

scholarly journals Social learning and the demise of costly cooperation in humans

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1853) ◽  
pp. 20170067 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell N. Burton-Chellew ◽  
Claire El Mouden ◽  
Stuart A. West
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Experimental Testing ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Public Goods Games

Humans have a sophisticated ability to learn from others, termed social learning, which has allowed us to spread over the planet, construct complex societies, and travel to the moon. It has been hypothesized that social learning has played a pivotal role in making human societies cooperative, by favouring cooperation even when it is not favoured by genetical selection. However, this hypothesis lacks direct experimental testing, and the opposite prediction has also been made, that social learning disfavours cooperation. We experimentally tested how different aspects of social learning affect the level of cooperation in public-goods games. We found that: (i) social information never increased cooperation and usually led to decreased cooperation; (ii) cooperation was lowest when individuals could observe how successful individuals behaved; and (iii) cooperation declined because individuals preferred to copy successful individuals, who cooperated less, rather than copy common behaviours. Overall, these results suggest that individuals use social information to try and improve their own success, and that this can lead to lower levels of cooperation.

scholarly journals Reciprocity, matching and conditional cooperation in two public goods games

2005 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Croson ◽  
Enrique Fatas ◽  
Tibor Neugebauer
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Conditional Cooperation ◽  
Public Goods Games

scholarly journals The strategy method conflates confusion with conditional cooperation in public goods games: evidence from large scale replications

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell Burton-Chellew ◽  
Victoire D'Amico ◽  
Claire Guérin
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Behaviors ◽  
Conditional Cooperation ◽  
Strategy Method ◽  
Public Goods Games ◽  
Willingness To Cooperate

The strategy method is often used in public goods games to measure individuals’ willingness to cooperate depending on the level of cooperation by others (conditional cooperation). However, while the strategy method is informative, it risks being suggestive and inducing elevated levels of conditional cooperation that are not motivated by concerns for fairness, especially in uncertain or confused participants. Here we make 845 participants complete the strategy method two times, once with human and once with computerized groupmates. Cooperation with computers cannot rationally be motivated by concerns for fairness. Worryingly, 69% of participants conditionally cooperated with computers, whereas only 7% conditionally cooperated with humans while not cooperating with computers. Overall, 83% of participants cooperated with computers, contributing 89% as much as towards humans. Results from games with computers present a serious problem for measuring social behaviors.

scholarly journals Payoff-based learning explains the decline in cooperation in public goods games

2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1801) ◽  
pp. 20142678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell N. Burton-Chellew ◽  
Heinrich H. Nax ◽  
Stuart A. West
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Learning Rule ◽  
Public Goods Game ◽  
Conditional Cooperation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Goods Games ◽  
Competing Hypotheses

Economic games such as the public goods game are increasingly being used to measure social behaviours in humans and non-human primates. The results of such games have been used to argue that people are pro-social, and that humans are uniquely altruistic, willingly sacrificing their own welfare in order to benefit others. However, an alternative explanation for the empirical observations is that individuals are mistaken, but learn, during the game, how to improve their personal payoff. We test between these competing hypotheses, by comparing the explanatory power of different behavioural rules, in public goods games, where individuals are given different amounts of information. We find: (i) that individual behaviour is best explained by a learning rule that is trying to maximize personal income; (ii) that conditional cooperation disappears when the consequences of cooperation are made clearer; and (iii) that social preferences, if they exist, are more anti-social than pro-social.

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