SPID 3.4 - social decision making

These flashcards cover the major concepts, experimental paradigms, and findings from the lecture on social decision-making, including social dilemmas, reciprocity, fairness, punishment, propagation of cooperation, and helping behaviour.

What is a social dilemma in the classic definition by Dawes (1980)?

A situation where each decision maker has a personally optimal choice that, if taken by everyone, leaves all worse off than if all had cooperated.

In a social dilemma, what distinguishes a social trap from a social fence?

Social trap: one’s action benefits the self but harms the collective; Social fence: one’s action costs the self but benefits the collective.

What is the rational self interest model?

• homo Economicus

• Humans should optimize outcomes for self over collective

what is the free-rider problem?

Ability for individuals to benefit from collective efforts without contributing

Why are humans ultrasocial?

• evolved as challenges to foraging And collaborating with large group

• Map onto social psychological ideas of interdependent collaboration and group culture

• Humans cooperate more than non-human primates

How did tomasello study humans as ultra social?

• humans punish free riders

• Children apply distributive justice

• Humans intervene as third party in response to norm violations

• Humans are motivated to help

• These all facility cooperation

What are the four key mechanisms that underlie human cooperation?

Direct reciprocity

Indirect reciprocity

Fairness/norms

Punishment.

What is direct reciprocity?

• I help you so you help me

What is the prisoner’s dilemma?

• A and B commit a crime And get arrested

• Prosecutors need one of them to turn on their partner so they can charge the other

• Either cooperate and refuse to talk or defect and testify against

• If A and B defect, they get 8 years each, if they cooperate they get 6 months each

• If one cooperates and the other defects, its 20 years and other goes free

• They do this with money instead for the lab experiments

How is the prisoner’s dilemma iterated for this study?

• repeated rounds of prisoners dilemma

• Individual conditions = individualists (maximise self-gain), cooperators (maximise gain for each player) and competitors (maximise relative self-gain)

• Also looked at totally cooperating and totally defecting

What is the ‘tit-for-tat’ (TFT) strategy in an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma?

Begin by cooperating and respond in kind to the other’s actions

Eg match the player’s last play

Direct reciprocity

According to Kuhlman & Marshello (1975), what personality trait uses each strategy?

Individualists = tit for tat

Cooperatora = cooperating but also tit for tat but not as much

Competitors = not anything specific as they just want to be better than you

Why can’t direct reciprocity always sustain cooperation?

Because choices can be non-simultaneous, options unequal, or more than two players are involved, making simple turn-taking impossible.

What is indirect reciprocity?

A helps B so B helps C

Or A helps B so C helps A

How did Wedekind & Braithwaite study indirect reciprocity?

• each player has £3 at beginning and play in groups and are in pairs of donors and receivers

• Donor can gift 50p to receiver but would never be in the same pair again

• Image score which increased and decreased and receiver scores were available to donor

• Donors more likely to donate when reviver image score was higher than average

• Diners with low image scores were more likely to donate

• Generosity is insatiably costly but pays off in the long run as image scores = earnings

How did a good reputation in the indirect reciprocity game affect later play in a Prisoner’s Dilemma?

Players with higher image scores earned more, indicating they received more cooperation later on.

How is the ultimatum game used to test fairness?

• player a gets initial money and they divide this however and offer part to player B

• B can accept or reject and if B rejects then no one gets money

• Recipients dont behave rationally and reject unfair offers

• Higher offers in japan and aim

What are common emotional responses to fairness?

• Less likeable, agreeable and attractive

• Respond with disgust, anger and sadness

• Aggressiveness too

How are public goods game used to test cooperation in groups?

• everyone gets an endowment

• Put as many tokens into the pot as they choose

• Pot multiplied then split up again

• Make more by defecting rather than cooperating

How did Fehr & Fischbacher study fairness and punishment games?

• 20 rounds of the public goods games

• Condition was the opportunity given to punish other players at period 11

• Measures how much they contribute to shared pot and if ppts pay to punish

• Contributions declined until punishment was added

• Even when costly, people are willing to do it

• Punishment increases contribution to public goods

What is third-party punishment?

A bystander paying a personal cost to punish someone who behaved unfairly toward another.

How did Fehr & Gächter (2000) study third-party punishment?

• ppts watch others play prisoners dilemma and can pay to punish

• People are willing to pay even when they witness

• Mostly when defector’s other player is a cooperator

Why do people punish to be fair?

• norms for fairness drive behaviour beyond rational self interest

• Fairness violations elicit power emotions

• People will incur a cost to punish for unfairness even when they are witnesses

How did Weber & Murnighan’s (2008) study consistent contributors?

• iterated public goods games

• Pro social v pro self ppts

• No conferate, high status consistent contributor and low status consistent contributor

• Contributions were high in groups with consistent contributors

• CCs made more money esp when high status

• Motivational disposition made no difference

How did Fowler & Christakis study the cooperative cascade?

• 6 public goods games with different groups

• Opportunity to punish or not

• Analysed relationship of each person’s behaviour with others across time and groups

• How cooperation in one group flows and spreads

• Contribution influences other people in next round, this persists and influences others ar further degrees of separation

• Even those who they have had no contact with

What is propagation of cooperation?

• When someone cooperates with another, it influences the second individual in future interactions

• Original individuals cooperative influence persists over time and across the social network

Differentiate ‘helping behaviour’ from ‘cooperation’

Helping can occur with unclear or no reciprocal benefit (‘pure altruism’), whereas cooperation typically involves mutual benefit or shared goals.

Which two empathy related processes underlie helping according to Kanske et al. (2016)?

Perspective-taking (mental state inference) and empathy (affective state inference).

What is the pathway to helping?

• perspective taking = helping

• Or pt to empathy which leads to empathic concern then helping

• Or pt to empathic distress which leads to stress

How did gleichgert and decety study the affective pathways to helping?

• 7500 physicians

• Personality questionnaires about empathetic concern, perspective taking, altruism, empathic distress and alexithyma etc

• Measured compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary trauma

In Gleichgert & Decety’s (2013) physician sample, which variables predicted compassion satisfaction versus burnout?

Empathic concern and perspective-taking predicted compassion satisfaction; empathic distress and alexithymia predicted burnout/secondary trauma.

How did Lim & DeSteno (2017) study experience and helping

• Questionarire about advertise life experiences, empathic concern, perspective taking and dispositional compassion

• Behavioural measure = donating to Red Cross

• Perspective taking didnt predict only adversity and empathic concern

Greater past adversity was linked to higher empathic concern and, through it, increased charitable giving and helping time.

What is the key takeaway about empathy as a moderator of helping behaviour?

Empathy facilitates helping, but the form it takes (concern vs distress) and situational moderators determine whether help is actually given.

Why does human cooperation require more than simple self-interest models to explain?

Because humans are influenced by reputation, fairness norms, punishment motives, empathy, and network dynamics that extend beyond immediate personal gain.