Testing the Bounds of Compassion in Young Children

Extensive research shows that, under the right circumstances, children are highly prosocial. Less in known about their capacity for compassion. Across five experiments (N = 285), we aimed to capture the bounds of 4-5-year-old children’s compassionate behaviour. In the first three experiments we varied cost of compassion by changing the reward (study 1), using explicit instructions (study 2), and ownership (study 3). In the final two experiments we varied the target of the compassionate behaviour, examining adults compared to puppet targets (study 4), and whether the target was an in-group member (study 5). We found strong evidence that cost reduces compassionate responding. By contrast, the recipient of compassion did not appear to influence compassionate responding: children were equally likely to help a human adult and a puppet, and an in-group member and neutral agent. Thus, personal cost appears to be a greater inhibitor to compassionate responding than who compassion is directed toward. These findings demonstrate the environmental factors that may reduce compassionate responding in young children, and call for careful consideration of how to mitigate these to create more positive and socially connected environments for children to flourish.

Multiperiod Contracting and Salesperson Effort Profiles: The Optimality of “Hockey Stick,” “Giving Up,” and “Resting on Laurels”

The authors study multiperiod sales force incentive contracting in which salespeople can engage in effort gaming, a phenomenon that has extensive empirical support. Focusing on a repeated moral hazard scenario with two independent periods and a risk-neutral agent with limited liability, the authors conduct a theoretical investigation to understand which effort profiles the firm can expect under the optimal contract. The authors show that various effort profiles that may give the appearance of being suboptimal, such as postponing effort exertion (“hockey stick”) and not exerting effort after a bad or a good initial demand outcome (“giving up” and “resting on laurels,” respectively) may indeed be induced optimally by the firm. This is because, under certain conditions that depend on how severe the contracting frictions are and how effective effort exertion is in increasing demand, the firm wants to concentrate rewards on extreme demand outcomes. Doing this induces gaming and reduces expected demand but also makes motivating effort cheaper, thus saving on incentive payments. On introducing dependence between time periods, such as when the agent can transfer demands between periods, this insight continues to hold and, furthermore, “hockey stick,” “giving up,” and “resting on laurels” can be optimal for the firm even under repeated short time horizon contracting. The results imply that one must carefully consider the setting and environmental factors when making inferences about contract effectiveness from dynamic effort profiles of agents.

Children selectively favor leaders and prosocial agents in an economic exchange

Most cooperative interactions involve the expectation of mutual reciprocation and are based on interpersonal trust. Thus, understanding when and how humans acquire interpersonal trust can help unveiling the origins and development of children’s cooperative behavior. Here, we investigated whether prior socio-moral information about trading partners modulates the choice of preschool- (4-5 years) and school-age children (7-8 years) to share their own goods in a child-friendly version of the Trust Game. In this game, the trustee partner can repay the child’s initial investment or keep everything and betray the trustor. In two studies, we addressed whether trust is modulated by trustees exhibiting prosocial versus antisocial behaviors (Study 1, ‘helpers and hinderers’), or respect-based versus fear-based power (Study 2, ‘leaders and bullies’). Preschoolers trusted the leader more than the bully, and trusted the hinderer less than a neutral agent, but did not yet trust the helper more than the hinderer. The tendency to trust helpers more than hinderers increased with age as a result of the increased propensity to trust the prosocial agent. In Study 3, a group of preschoolers played the Dictator Game, a measure of pure generosity, with the same agents used for Study 1. Sharing rates were reliably lower than in Study 1, suggesting that the rates of investment in the trust game cannot be due solely to altruistic or indirect reciprocity motives. Overall, these findings indicate that, by age five, children understand complex cooperative exchanges and start relying on socio-moral information when deciding whom to trust.

Central Java’s assault on media ethics: How the governor turned watchdogs into pet poodles

This study examines the coverage of Indonesia's main newspapers, Suara Merdeka and Radar Semarang (Jawa Pos group), about the Governor of Central Java, Indonesia, Ganjar Pranowo, in 2016, during his midterm period in leading the province. It highlights how the Governor, who initially removed help for journalists, became a figure that journalists like. The qualitative content analysis of 20 articles that took part in the journalism competition for journalists held by Public Relations Bureau Regional Secretary of Central Java Province showed that the news stopped at Ganjar Pranowo without trying to find deeper meaning from the field. The news frames used by the newspapers reflected that journalists who are members of the Press Club at the Central Java Provincial Secretariat Bureau were reluctant to be critical toward Ganjar Pranowo. Ganjar Pranowo was portrayed solely in the context of his success in leading Central Java based on assumptions made by journalists. The newspapers is no longer a neutral agent, but is rather tendentious. Unlike in other countries, in Central Java the Press Club is not beneficial for the development of democracy and the establishment of journalists.

Semantics

Chapter 3 presents a semantic theory for reasons locutions. The semantic theory pairs a Kaplanian semantic framework with Craige Roberts’s question under discussion (QUD) pragmatic theory. The result is QUD Reasons Contextualism, which specifies eight distinct kinds of contexts of utterance for reasons locutions and the truth conditions for each one. The chapter then explains how each of the six reasons distinctions surveyed in Chapter 1 is related to the semantics for reasons locutions. In particular, the chapter shows that the agent neutral/agent relative distinction is a presemantic distinction, the normative/motivating/explanatory, objective/subjective, and permissive/obligatory distinctions are content distinctions, the adaptive/evaluative/practical and internal/external distinctions are domain distinctions, and the contributory/conclusive/sufficient distinction is a nonsemantic distinction. In addition, the chapter presents an extended example and an analogy with love locutions to illustrate the results. Finally, the chapter suggests a formal semantics for reasons locutions in the style of Kratzer’s semantics for modals.

Effects of convincing power and neutrality on minority opinion spreading

The dynamics evolution of the minority opinion in public debates is studied using a convincing power (CP) model with neutrality. In a given group, an agent with a definite standpoint (yes or no) can be persuaded to be a neutral agent, if its capacity of persuasion is lower than the average CP of its opponents. Besides that a neutral agent will change its state and follow a more persuasive opinion. Starting from two opposite opinions with different rates, repeated local discussions are found to drive the minority reversal. It reveals that in addition to the initial minority, the number of neutral agents is also an important factor to the eventual winners. During the process of consensus, there exists a threshold of initial fraction to guarantee one side win. The results have a guiding significance for designing strategies to win a public debate.

A Framework for Reaching Consensus Under Uncertainty in Multi-Agent Negotiations

International negotiations often have to be reached and ratified even though the parties involved have diverging opinions and interests. One of the common protocols used in order to achieved consensus is to make use of a neutral agent, called the facilitator whose role is to assist the procedure by allowing communication equally among different parts and initiate the procedure by a proposal which is more likely to be accepted by all decision makers. A model of this procedure is presented, providing a good candidate for the initial proposal of the facilitator and quantifying various concepts such as the bargaining power of each party.