Is cooperation instinctive? Evidence from the response times in a public goods game

Lotito, Gianna; Migheli, Matteo; Ortona, Guido

doi:10.1007/s10818-012-9141-5

Cited by 82 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Consistent with experimental studies, which found that encouraging intuitive processing increased cooperation (Rand et al, 2014), several studies have reported a negative REACTION TIMES AND REFLECTION 7 correlation between reaction times and cooperation (Capellan et al, 2014;Lotito et al, 2013;Nielsen et al, 2014;Rand et al, 2012). However, counterexamples show that sometimes reaction times are positively correlated with cooperation.…”

Section: The Inverted-u Pattern Of Reaction Timessupporting

confidence: 53%

“…Previous studies have produced conflicting results as to whether reaction times are positively (Piovesan & Wengström, 2009) or negatively (Capellan et al, 2014Lotito et al, 2013;Nielsen et al, 2014;Rand et al, 2012) Although reaction times are sometimes interpreted as a veridical indicator of the degree of reflection, the pattern of reaction times observed in Studies 1-3 was different from the effects of experimentally manipulating intuitive or reflective processing. Forcing participants to respond intuitively through time pressure (Study 4) or cognitive priming (Study 6) decreased the rate of selfish decisions, had no effect on the rate of intermediate decisions, and increased the rate of cooperative decisions.…”

Section: Reaction Times and Reflection 28mentioning

confidence: 94%

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Reaction Times and Reflection in Social Dilemmas: Extreme Responses are Fast, But Not Intuitive

2014

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Section: The Inverted-u Pattern Of Reaction Timessupporting

confidence: 53%

Section: Reaction Times and Reflection 28mentioning

confidence: 94%

Reaction Times and Reflection in Social Dilemmas: Extreme Responses are Fast, But Not Intuitive

2014

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“…Furthermore, individual differences in reaction times, which are often interpreted as a proxy for intuitiveness (although see refs. 45 and 46 for an alternative interpretation based on decision conflict), have been associated with both increased (4,(47)(48)(49) and decreased (50, 51) cooperation. Our model therefore helps to explain the otherwise-puzzling difference in experimental results between cognitive process manipulations and reaction time correlations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intuition, deliberation, and the evolution of cooperation

Bear

Rand

2016

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

281

239

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Humans often cooperate with strangers, despite the costs involved. A long tradition of theoretical modeling has sought ultimate evolutionary explanations for this seemingly altruistic behavior. More recently, an entirely separate body of experimental work has begun to investigate cooperation's proximate cognitive underpinnings using a dualprocess framework: Is deliberative self-control necessary to reign in selfish impulses, or does self-interested deliberation restrain an intuitive desire to cooperate? Integrating these ultimate and proximate approaches, we introduce dual-process cognition into a formal gametheoretic model of the evolution of cooperation. Agents play prisoner's dilemma games, some of which are one-shot and others of which involve reciprocity. They can either respond by using a generalized intuition, which is not sensitive to whether the game is oneshot or reciprocal, or pay a (stochastically varying) cost to deliberate and tailor their strategy to the type of game they are facing. We find that, depending on the level of reciprocity and assortment, selection favors one of two strategies: intuitive defectors who never deliberate, or dual-process agents who intuitively cooperate but sometimes use deliberation to defect in one-shot games. Critically, selection never favors agents who use deliberation to override selfish impulses: Deliberation only serves to undermine cooperation with strangers. Thus, by introducing a formal theoretical framework for exploring cooperation through a dual-process lens, we provide a clear answer regarding the role of deliberation in cooperation based on evolutionary modeling, help to organize a growing body of sometimesconflicting empirical results, and shed light on the nature of human cognition and social decision making.dual process | cooperation | evolutionary game theory | prisoner's dilemma | heuristics C ooperation, where people pay costs to benefit others, is a defining feature of human social interaction. However, our willingness to cooperate is puzzling because of the individual costs that cooperation entails. Explaining how the "selfish" process of evolution could have given rise to seemingly altruistic cooperation has been a major focus of research across the natural and social sciences for decades. Using the tools of evolutionary game theory, great progress has been made in identifying mechanisms by which selection can favor cooperative strategies, providing ultimate explanations for the widespread cooperation observed in human societies (1).In recent years, the proximate cognitive mechanisms underpinning human cooperation have also begun to receive widespread attention. For example, a wide range of experimental evidence suggests that emotion and intuition play a key role in motivating cooperation (2-5). The dual-process perspective on decision making (6-8) offers a powerful framework for integrating these observations. In the dual-process framework, decisions are conceptualized as arising from competition between two types of cognitive processes: (i) auto...

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“…They interpret this as evidence that giving is 'spontaneous' and greed 'calculated'. Similarly, Lotito et al (2013) report that lower decision times are associated with more cooperation in a public good game, and Nielsen et al (2013) find that free-riders, classified according to the Fischbacher et al (2001) taxonomy of contributor types, exhibit longer decision times than do conditional cooperators. Tinghög et al (2013), however, find no statistically significant effect of time-pressure in public good games, whereas Lohse et al (2014) report the opposite pattern-that decision times are positively correlated with contributions.…”

Section: Self-control and Social Dilemmasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social dilemmas: When self-control benefits cooperation

Martinsson

Myrseth

Wollbrant

2014

Journal of Economic Psychology

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Individuals in a social dilemma may experience a self-control conflict between urges to act selfishly and better judgment to cooperate. Pairing a public goods game with a subtle framing technique, we test whether perception of self-control conflict strengthens the association between self-control and cooperation. Consistent with our hypothesis, cooperative behavior is positively associated with self-control in the treatment that raised the relative likelihood of perceiving conflict, but not associated with self-control in the treatment that lowered the likelihood. Our results indicate that self-control benefits cooperation.

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Is cooperation instinctive? Evidence from the response times in a public goods game

Cited by 82 publications

References 27 publications

Reaction Times and Reflection in Social Dilemmas: Extreme Responses are Fast, But Not Intuitive

Reaction Times and Reflection in Social Dilemmas: Extreme Responses are Fast, But Not Intuitive

Intuition, deliberation, and the evolution of cooperation

Social dilemmas: When self-control benefits cooperation

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