Choosing Less over More Money

Why choose less money over more when no one is watching? A central tenet of economics is that this behaviour can be explained by intrinsic motivation. But what does intrinsic motivation entail? What encourages it? This paper answers these questions through a Smithian lens: moral motivation includes not only a naturally strong love of praise and dread of blame but also a natural, and stronger, love of being worthy of praise and dread of being worthy of blame, even if neither is necessarily given. I rely on quantitative and qualitative data from economic experiments to illustrate this claim. While the current scholarship on Smith has applied his theory to situations in which our actions either evoke reactions from others or have monetary consequences for them, I extend his insights to receiver games (Tjøtta 2019) and dice-rolling games (Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heusi 2013) aimed at eliciting self-regarding concerns, that is, actions affecting the interests of only ourselves. I argue that these games accentuate the strength of the love of praiseworthiness in guiding behaviour, emphasising its immediate reference to others and foundation in intentions along with outcomes.

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

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.

Decoupling cooperation and punishment in humans shows that punishment is not an altruistic trait

Economic experiments have suggested that cooperative humans will altruistically match local levels of cooperation (conditional cooperation) and pay to punish non-cooperators (altruistic punishment). Evolutionary models have suggested that if altruists punish non-altruists this could favour the evolution of costly helping behaviours (cooperation) among strangers. An often-key requirement is that helping behaviours and punishing behaviours form one single conjoined trait (strong reciprocity). Previous economics experiments have provided support for the hypothesis that punishment and cooperation form one conjoined, altruistically motivated, trait. However, such a conjoined trait may be evolutionarily unstable, and previous experiments have confounded a fear of being punished with being surrounded by cooperators, two factors that could favour cooperation. Here, we experimentally decouple the fear of punishment from a cooperative environment and allow cooperation and punishment behaviour to freely separate (420 participants). We show, that if a minority of individuals is made immune to punishment, they (i) learn to stop cooperating on average despite being surrounded by high levels of cooperation, contradicting the idea of conditional cooperation and (ii) often continue to punish, ‘hypocritically’, showing that cooperation and punishment do not form one, altruistically motivated, linked trait.

Commercial cross breeding of dairy cattle with beef bulls in Western Siberia

The results of commercial cross breeding of dairy cattle with meat bulls are presented. Scientific and economic experiments were carried out in Omsk and Novosibirsk regions. Ranked cows of the red steppe breed were selected for the experiment. They were artificially inseminated with the semen of bulls of the red steppe, Kalmyk and Hereford breeds. Bulls of each genotype were selected from the calves born and three groups were formed by the method of analogue groups: 1st control - the red steppe, 2nd experimental - crossbreed of Kalmyk × the red steppe, 3d experimental – crossbreed of Hereford × the red steppe. In the second experiment two groups were formed from castrated bulls of Simmental and Hereford breeds × Simmental hybrids: 1st control group of Simmental breed, 2nd experimental group - Hereford × Simmental hybrids. A highly reliable superiority in the live weight of young animals of the 2nd and 3d experimental groups was revealed. From the age of 9 to 15 months, it was 16.5-77.3 kg (p <0.05-0.001) compared to animals in the control group. In the group of the red steppe x Hereford, slaughter yield was 58.6%, which is higher than that of the first two groups, by 1.9 and 1.8% (p <0.05), the carcass weight was 209.3 kg, the red steppe - 172.2 kg (p <0.01). In the second experiment at the age of 8, 12, 15 and 18 months, the bulls of the 2nd experimental group outperformed the peers of the 1st control group by 15.2-29.4 kg (p <0.05-0.001). Their slaughter yield was higher than that of the control group, and accounted for 57.8%. In two experiments, crossbred groups of animals were characterized by a better meat productivity. Commercial crossbreeding of dairy cows with beef breeds of bulls allows to increase meat productivity and increase the population of the meat cattle.

Organic microelement complex in feeding of cows in the production of iodized milk

The optimal level of mineral nutrition of animals is of great importance in the organization of complete feeding. Micromineral feeding of cattle, pigs and poultry has recently received more and more attention. A significant contribution to the solution of this issue is made by an organic microelement complex based on L-aspartic amino acid produced by JSC “Bioamide” under the trademark OMEC-7M. The purpose of the research was to study the effect of the organic microelement complex based on the L-aspartic amino acid OMEC-7M and organic iodine OMEC-J on the milk productivity and composition of cow milk. In order to conduct scientific and economic experiments, groups of cows have been formed according to the principle of analogous pairs taking into account age, live weight, date of the last calving, productivity and physiological state. Live weight of cows was 500–550 kg with a yield of 5000-6000 kg of milk per lactation. The conditions of feeding and housing the animals were the same, with the exception of the studied factors. Studies have been conducted to determine the effect of organic trace elements Cu, Mn, Zn, Fe, Co and Se in the form of asparaginates and organic J on the milk productivity of cows, the composition of milk and the content of iodine in it, the morphological and biochemical composition of blood, the content of the rumen, the digestibility and use of feed nutrients compared to the inorganic salts of these trace elements. As a result of four scientific and economic experiments the effectiveness of the use of the organic microelement complex based on the L-aspartic amino acid OMEC-7M and organic iodine OMEC-J in the feeding of cows in the production of iodized milk has been proved.

Utilizing Incentivized Economic Experiments to Test for Social Skills Acquisition Through Physical Education: Study Protocol of the Movigen Project

Besides cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills—social skills in particular—are crucial for outcomes in various domains of life. The present work describes the design of the Movigen project, an intervention study with children aged 10–13 years using enhanced physical education lessons to foster social skills in a playful way. Utilizing a novel methodological approach various incentivized economic experiments were applied to test for spillover effects of the intervention on social skills. At three points during the course of the study individuals participated in a series of incentivized economic experiments to elicit economic preferences and personality traits. Additional information about physical activity and free time activities, different psychometric scales, and family background were elicited with questionnaires. Furthermore, a subset of individuals was equipped with accelerometers for 7 days to validate the answers on physical activity in the questionnaire. The data set comprises a treatment group which received enhanced physical education lessons and a control group which received regular physical education lessons at school. The comparison of individuals' decision in the economic experiments between both groups allows to study the impact of our intervention on social skills.

Decoupling altruistic punishment: immune punishers learn to not cooperate, but still punish hypocritically.

Economic experiments, and evolutionary models, have suggested that human cooperation is sustained by altruistically motivated cooperators paying to punish non-cooperators. Consequently, punishment allows cooperators to happily match each other (conditionally cooperate), confident that they will not be exploited by non-cooperators. However, it is not clear that punishment is altruistically motivated, and previous experiments have confounded a fear of being punished with being surrounded by cooperators. Here, we experimentally decouple the fear of punishment from a cooperative environment and allow cooperation and punishment to freely separate (420 participants). We show, that if a minority of individuals are made immune to punishment, they (1) learn to stop cooperating despite being surrounded by high levels of cooperation; and (2) continue to punish, ‘hypocritically’, showing that cooperation and punishment do not form one, altruistically motivated, linked trait. Overall, 48% of punishers were ‘anti-social’ during the experiment, suggesting humans are not in general altruistic punishers.

The influence of enzyme probiotics on the growth, development and metabolism in young cattle

The purpose of the research was to make a comparative study of the use of enzymatic probiotics in the feeding of young cattle Black-and-White breed and to determine their effect on growth, development and metabolic processes. Under the conditions of the Amur region the use of enzymatic probiotics in the feeding of young cattle has been justified in two scientific and economic experiments. In physiological experiments the digestibility of nutrients in rations has been determined; the balance of nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus has been studied. As a result of the first scientific and economic experiment, a comparative study of the feeding of enzymatic probiotics Cellobacterin and Vitacell to calves has been carried out. It has been found that the inclusion of the enzymatic probiotic Vitacell in the rations of calves had a better effect on growth, digestibility and balance of nutrients as well as improved hematological parameters, bringing them to the physiological norms. In the second experiment the effect of the enzymatic probiotics Vitacell and Promilk on the dynamics of the live weight of young cattle, their growth, development and metabolic processes has been studied. It has been found that the enzymatic probiotic Vitacell had a better effect on growth, digestibility and nutrient balance compared to the probiotic Promilk. Thus, physiological, biochemical, zootechnical and economic research methods proved the feasibility of using probiotics in the rations of calves of Black-and-White breed, but the best results were obtained when using the probiotic Vitacell. The data of the production inspection confirmed the results obtained in scientific and economic experiments.