Conditioning on what? Heterogeneous contributions and conditional cooperation

Hartig, Björn; Irlenbusch, Bernd; Kölle, Felix

doi:10.1016/j.socec.2015.01.001

Cited by 28 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…On average, individuals tended to contribute less when there was more heterogeneity in peer contributions (linear mixed model with subject as random factor, P < 0.001; see Supplementary Information , section 3 for a detailed overview of statistical methods). This is in accordance with earlier studies 32 33 34 . In addition, we observe that in two of the three comparisons the variation in response contributions was higher in case of more heterogeneity in peer contributions (for averages 10 and 13.33, Brown-Forsythe test: P < 0.001; for average 6.67, Brown-Forsythe test: P = 0.733).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 94%

“…One might expect that people take this variation in cooperation strategies into account when making decisions on their own degree of cooperation. In fact, some studies 32 33 34 have reported that, on average, individuals tend to reduce their contribution to a public good if the contributions of their peers are more heterogeneous. However, it is not clear how this effect arises.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Human cooperation in groups: variation begets variation

Berg

Molleman

Junikka

et al. 2015

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Many experiments on human cooperation have revealed that individuals differ systematically in their tendency to cooperate with others. It has also been shown that individuals condition their behaviour on the overall cooperation level of their peers. Yet, little is known about how individuals respond to heterogeneity in cooperativeness in their neighbourhood. Here, we present an experimental study investigating whether and how people respond to heterogeneous behaviour in a public goods game. We find that a large majority of subjects does respond to heterogeneity in their group, but they respond in quite different ways. Most subjects contribute less to the public good when the contributions of their peers are more heterogeneous, but a substantial fraction of individuals consistently contributes more in this case. In addition, we find that individuals that respond positively to heterogeneity have a higher general cooperation tendency. The finding that social responsiveness occurs in different forms and is correlated with cooperativeness may have important implications for the outcome of cooperative interactions.

show abstract

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 94%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Human cooperation in groups: variation begets variation

Berg

Molleman

Junikka

et al. 2015

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…altruism | strategy method | inequity aversion | reciprocity | social preferences I t is an accepted paradigm that humans can be divided into fairminded cooperators that act for the good of the group and selfish "free riders" that exploit the altruism of others (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16). This conclusion comes from the results of economic experiments, where people in small groups are given some money to play games with.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Conditional cooperation and confusion in public-goods experiments

Burton-Chellew

Mouden

West

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

127

140

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Economic experiments are often used to study if humans altruistically value the welfare of others. A canonical result from public-good games is that humans vary in how they value the welfare of others, dividing into fair-minded conditional cooperators, who match the cooperation of others, and selfish noncooperators. However, an alternative explanation for the data are that individuals vary in their understanding of how to maximize income, with misunderstanding leading to the appearance of cooperation. We show that (i) individuals divide into the same behavioral types when playing with computers, whom they cannot be concerned with the welfare of; (ii) behavior across games with computers and humans is correlated and can be explained by variation in understanding of how to maximize income; (iii) misunderstanding correlates with higher levels of cooperation; and (iv) standard control questions do not guarantee understanding. These results cast doubt on certain experimental methods and demonstrate that a common assumption in behavioral economics experiments, that choices reveal motivations, will not necessarily hold.altruism | strategy method | inequity aversion | reciprocity | social preferences

show abstract

“…First, in our experiment (see below) subjects were only provided with information about average but not individual behavior of others, which renders individual payoff comparisons difficult. Second, as shown by Hartig et al (2015), even if individuals are provided with information about individual contribution behavior, the majority of people who do react positively to others' contributions are indeed mainly guided by the average contribution of others (rather than, e.g., by the highest or the lowest contribution). A player i's objective function can then be written as…”

Section: The General Setup and Theoretical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cooperation, Discounting, and the Eﬀects of Delayed Costs and Beneﬁts

Kölle

Lauer

2018

SSRN Journal

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Numerous studies have investigated how people resolve intertemporal trade-offs in individual decision making, but little is known about how the timing of costs and benefits affects behavior in strategic decision situations. Here, we experimentally study how delayed costs and/or benefits affect cooperation in a social dilemma situation. We find that cooperation is substantially reduced (increased) when only the benefits (costs) of cooperation are shifted towards the future. We show that the change in contributions can be explained by (i) a shift in the beliefs about others' cooperativeness, (ii) a shift in subjects' willingness to conditionally cooperate, and (iii) a subject's degree of impatience. We further demonstrate that the amount of economic incentives needed to close the cooperation gap are substantial, indicating discount rates in our strategic context of about 50 percent, much higher than the ones typically observed in individual decision contexts. Finally, when both costs and benefits are delayed to the same extent, contribution levels do not change, indicating that cooperation is time-consistent.

show abstract

Conditioning on what? Heterogeneous contributions and conditional cooperation

Cited by 28 publications

References 28 publications

Human cooperation in groups: variation begets variation

Human cooperation in groups: variation begets variation

Conditional cooperation and confusion in public-goods experiments

Cooperation, Discounting, and the Eﬀects of Delayed Costs and Beneﬁts

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About