scholarly journals Explaining Cooperative Behavior in Public Goods Games: How Preferences and Beliefs Affect Contribution Levels

Games ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt Ackermann ◽  
Ryan Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
Endogenous Factors ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Repeated Interaction ◽  
Public Goods Games ◽  
The Individual

There is a large body of evidence showing that a substantial proportion of people cooperate in public goods games, even if the situation is one-shot and completely anonymous. In the present study, we bring together two major endogenous factors that are known to affect cooperation levels, and in so doing replicate and extend previous empirical research on public goods problems in several important ways. We measure social preferences and concurrently elicit beliefs on the individual level using multiple methods, and at multiple times during the experiment. With this rich set of predictor variables at the individual level, we test how well individual contribution decisions can be accounted for in both a one-shot and a repeated interaction. We show that when heterogeneity in people’s preferences and beliefs is taken into consideration, more than 50% of the variance in individual choice behavior can be explained. Furthermore, we show that people do not only update their beliefs in a repeated public goods game, but also that their social preferences change, to some extent, in response to the choices of other decision makers.

Trustees, Delegates, and Responsiveness in Comparative Perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 766-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Bowler
Keyword(s):  
Academic Research ◽  
Large Body ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Conceptual Distinction ◽  
Citizen Preferences ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Government Responsiveness

A large body of aggregate-level work shows that government policies do indeed respond to citizen preferences. But whether citizens recognize that government is responsive is another question entirely. Indeed, a prior question is whether or not citizens value responsiveness in the way that academic research assumes they should in the first place. Using comparative data from the European Social Survey, this article examines how citizens see government responsiveness. We show that several key assumptions of the aggregate-level literature are met at the individual level. But we also present results that show that attitudes toward representation and responsiveness are colored, sometimes in quite surprising ways, by winner–loser effects. In a finding that stands in some contrast to the normative literature on the topic, we show that these sorts of short-term attitudes help shape preferences for models of representation. In particular, we show that the distinction between delegates and trustees is a conceptual distinction that has limits in helping us to understand citizen preferences for representation.

Gossip and Reputation in Social Dilemmas

2019 ◽  
pp. 192-213
Author(s):  
Manfred Milinski
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Social Dilemmas ◽  
Social Dilemma ◽  
Interaction Partner ◽  
Indirect Reciprocity ◽  
Free Riders ◽  
Public Goods Games ◽  
Trust Games ◽  
The Individual

In a social dilemma the interest of the individual is in conflict with that of the group. However, individuals will help their group, if they gain in reputation that pays off later. Future partners can observe cooperative or defective behavior or, more likely, hear about it through gossip. In Indirect Reciprocity games, Public Goods games, and Trust games gossip may be the only information a participant can use to decide whether she can trust her interaction partner and give away her holdings hoping for reciprocation. Even the mere potential for gossip can increase trust and trustworthiness thus promoting cooperation. Gossip is a cheap mechanism for disciplining free riders, potentially even extortioners. The temptation for manipulative gossip defines the gossiper’s dilemma. Psychological adaptations for assessing gossip veracity help to avoid being manipulated. The danger of false gossip is reduced when multiple gossips exist.

Variability of Executive Function Performance in Preschoolers with Developmental Language Disorder

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (04) ◽  
pp. 243-255
Author(s):  
Leah L. Kapa ◽  
Jessie A. Erikson
Keyword(s):  
Executive Function ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Memory Inhibition ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Nonverbal Measures

AbstractAlthough results vary across individual studies, a large body of evidence suggests that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have domain-general deficits in executive function compared with peers with typically developing language. Poorer performance for children with DLD has been reported on verbal and nonverbal measures of sustained selective attention, working memory, inhibition, and shifting. However, examination of the variability of task scores among both children with and without DLD reveals a wide range of executive function performance for both groups. Additionally, using executive function scores to classify children into DLD versus typical groups results in classification accuracy that is not clinically useful. This evidence indicates that group-level differences in executive function abilities between children with and without DLD cannot be applied at the individual level. Many children with DLD appear to have intact executive function abilities, which undermines the possibility that poor executive functioning causes language deficits in this population. However, a substantial number of children with DLD also have executive function deficits, and, therefore, therapy approaches with this population should consider both their language and executive function abilities.

scholarly journals The Black Queen Hypothesis: Evolution of Dependencies through Adaptive Gene Loss

mBio ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Jeffrey Morris ◽  
Richard E. Lenski ◽  
Erik R. Zinser
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Gene Loss ◽  
Selective Advantage ◽  
Free Living ◽  
Microbial World ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Novel Theory ◽  
Queen Of Spades ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
The Individual

ABSTRACTReductive genomic evolution, driven by genetic drift, is common in endosymbiotic bacteria. Genome reduction is less common in free-living organisms, but it has occurred in the numerically dominant open-ocean bacterioplanktonProchlorococcusand “CandidatusPelagibacter,” and in these cases the reduction appears to be driven by natural selection rather than drift. Gene loss in free-living organisms may leave them dependent on cooccurring microbes for lost metabolic functions. We present the Black Queen Hypothesis (BQH), a novel theory of reductive evolution that explains how selection leads to such dependencies; its name refers to the queen of spades in the game Hearts, where the usual strategy is to avoid taking this card. Gene loss can provide a selective advantage by conserving an organism’s limiting resources, provided the gene’s function is dispensable. Many vital genetic functions are leaky, thereby unavoidably producing public goods that are available to the entire community. Such leaky functions are thus dispensable for individuals, provided they are not lost entirely from the community. The BQH predicts that the loss of a costly, leaky function is selectively favored at the individual level and will proceed until the production of public goods is just sufficient to support the equilibrium community; at that point, the benefit of any further loss would be offset by the cost. Evolution in accordance with the BQH thus generates “beneficiaries” of reduced genomic content that are dependent on leaky “helpers,” and it may explain the observed nonuniversality of prototrophy, stress resistance, and other cellular functions in the microbial world.

scholarly journals Culture and cooperation: Examination of US-Japan differences in the framework of uncertainty avoidance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kodai Kusano
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Ultimatum Game ◽  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
Intolerance Of Uncertainty ◽  
Uncertainty Avoidance ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Cultural Framework ◽  
Cooperative Behaviors ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Level Analysis

The objective of this thesis was to examine whether uncertainty avoidance dimension of culture produces Unites State-Japan differences in cooperative behavior. I examined how uncertainty operated to produce cooperative behaviors differently between American and Japanese subjects. The subjects' cooperative behaviors were observed during the ultimatum game. Individual differences in individualism-collectivism, intolerance of uncertainty, and neuroticism were also measured as potential mediators or covariates of the effect of uncertainty and country on the cooperative behavior. Data showed that although there was no cultural difference on cooperative behaviors between Americans and the Japanese, uncertainty generally increased cooperative behaviors across cultures. The individual-level analysis also demonstrated that the Japanese had higher intolerance of uncertainty than did Americans. This thesis suggests that the uncertainty avoidance dimension is a useful cultural framework to explore cultural differences between Americans and Japanese in various domains of behaviors.

scholarly journals Computational Behavioral Models for Public Goods Games on Social Networks

Games ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Tomassini ◽  
Alberto Antonioni
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Network Structures ◽  
Behavioral Models ◽  
Public Goods Games

Cooperation is a fundamental aspect of well-organized societies and public good games are a useful metaphor for modeling cooperative behavior in the presence of strong incentives to free ride. Usually, social agents interact to play a public good game through network structures. Here, we use social network structures and computational agent rules inspired by recent experimental work in order to develop models of agent behavior playing public goods games. The results of our numerical simulations based on a couple of simple models show that agents behave in a manner qualitatively similar to what has been observed experimentally. Computational models such as those presented here are very useful to interpret observed behavior and to enhance computationally the limited variation that is possible in the experimental domain. By assuming a priori reasonable individual behaviors, the easiness of running simulations could also facilitate exploration prior to any experimental work in order to vary and estimate a number of key parameters that would be very difficult, if not impossible, to change during the actual experiment.

scholarly journals Selfishness driving reductive evolution shapes interdependent patterns in spatially structured microbial communities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miaoxiao Wang ◽  
Xiaonan Liu ◽  
Yong Nie ◽  
Xiao-Lei Wu
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Reductive Evolution ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Function Loss ◽  
Evolution Dynamics ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Public Production ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Spatial Positioning ◽  
And Function

AbstractMicrobes release a wide variety of metabolites to the environment that benefit the whole population, called public goods. Public goods sharing drives adaptive function loss, and allows the rise of metabolic cross-feeding. However, how public goods sharing governs the succession of communities over evolutionary time scales remains unclear. To resolve this issue, we constructed an individual-based model, where an autonomous population that possessed functions to produce three essential public goods, was allowed to randomly lose functions. Simulations revealed that function loss genotypes could evolve from the autonomous ancestor, driven by the selfish public production trade-off at the individual level. These genotypes could then automatically develop to three possible types of interdependent patterns: complete functional division, one-way dependency, and asymmetric functional complementation, which were influenced by function cost and function redundancy. In addition, we found random evolutionary events, i.e., the priority and the relative spatial positioning of genotype emergence, are also important in governing community assembly. Moreover, communities occupied by interdependent patterns exhibited better resistance to environmental perturbation, suggesting such patterns are selectively favored. Our work integrates ecological interactions with evolution dynamics, providing a new perspective to explain how reductive evolution shapes microbial interdependencies and governs the succession of communities.

EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENT KNOWLEDGE ON AGGLOMERATION AND COOPERATION IN SPATIAL PUBLIC GOODS GAMES

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (supp01) ◽  
pp. 1250056 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHENG-YI XIA ◽  
SANDRO MELONI ◽  
YAMIR MORENO
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Evolutionary Game Theory ◽  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
Evolutionary Game ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Public Goods Games ◽  
Competitive Environments ◽  
The Social ◽  
Standing Problem

Nowadays, our society is characterized by high levels of social cohesion and cooperation that are in contrast with the selfish nature of human beings. One of the principal challenges for the social sciences is to explain the emergence of agglomeration and cooperative behavior in an environment characterized by egoistic individuals. In this paper we address this long standing problem with the tools given by evolutionary game theory. Specifically, we explore a model in which selfish individuals interact in a public goods creation environment. As a further ingredient each agent is characterized by an individual expectation and, if unsatisfied, can change its location. In this scenario we study the effects of the knowledge of other players' performances on both cooperation and agglomeration and discuss the results in the context of previous and related works. Our results show that cooperation and agglomeration are generally robust against the inclusion of different information on other player performances and, in some cases, it can produce an enhancement of the cooperative behavior. Moreover, our results demonstrate that only in extreme and very competitive environments cooperation and agglomeration are lost.

scholarly journals Goal sharing with others modulates the sense of agency and motor accuracy in social contexts

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. e0246561
Author(s):  
Kazuki Hayashida ◽  
Yuki Nishi ◽  
Michihiro Osumi ◽  
Satoshi Nobusako ◽  
Shu Morioka
Keyword(s):  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Time Interval ◽  
Cooperative Groups ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Predictive Processes ◽  
Motor Accuracy

Sense of agency (SoA), the feeling of control over one’s own actions and their effects, is fundamental to goal-directed actions at the individual level and may constitute a cornerstone of everyday life, including cooperative behavior (i.e., goal sharing). Previous studies have demonstrated that goal sharing can activate the motor prediction of both agent’s action and partner’s action in joint-action tasks. Moreover, given that from an SoA perspective, predictive processes are an essential basis, there is a possibility that goal sharing may modulate SoA. However, the possibility for goal sharing to modulate SoA remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate whether goal sharing modulates the intentional binding (IB) effect (a method that can quantitatively measure SoA) of self-generated and observed partner’s actions and improves motor accuracy. Participants were required to stop a circular horizontal moving object by pressing a key when the object reaches the center of a target in a social situation. This task measured IB by having participants estimate the time interval between action and effect in several 100 milliseconds, with shorter time interval estimations indicating enhancement of SoA. Participants were randomly divided into 13 Cooperative groups (goal sharing) and 13 Independent groups (non-goal sharing). Cooperative groups were instructed to perform the task together, while Independent groups did so individually. Participants estimated the time interval between them by pressing the key and hearing the corresponding sound (Self-generated action) and the other person pressing the key and hearing the sound (Observed action). Our results indicated that goal sharing improved motor accuracy and enhanced both the IB of Self-generated and Observed actions compared to non-goal sharing. We suggest that SoA can be modulated by goal sharing in specific social contexts.

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