Why do groups cooperate more than individuals to reduce risks?

Gong, Min; Baron, Jonathan; Kunreuther, Howard

doi:10.1007/s11238-012-9318-3

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…18 However, the high level of competition for funding and the tendency for review panels to be risk averse compared with individuals suggests pioneering and so potentially risky proposals are unlikely to be funded anyway. 19 This type of production quota is likely to thwart researchers who are particularly skilled at winning grants. An alternative is a targeted production quota that excludes unsuccessful applicants for a cooling off period as implemented by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.…”

Section: Supply and Demand Side Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Funding grant proposals for scientific research: retrospective analysis of scores by members of grant review panel

Graves

Barnett

Clarke

2011

BMJ

113

112

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Objective To quantify randomness and cost when choosing health and medical research projects for funding. Design Retrospective analysis.Setting Grant review panels of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.Participants Panel members' scores for grant proposals submitted in 2009. Main outcome measuresThe proportion of grant proposals that were always, sometimes, and never funded after accounting for random variability arising from differences in panel members' scores, and the cost effectiveness of different size assessment panels.Results 59% of 620 funded grants were sometimes not funded when random variability was taken into account. Only 9% (n=255) of grant proposals were always funded, 61% (n=1662) never funded, and 29% (n=788) sometimes funded. The extra cost per grant effectively funded from the most effective system was $A18 541 (£11 848; €13 482; $19 343).Conclusions Allocating funding for scientific research in health and medicine is costly and somewhat random. There are many useful research questions to be addressed that could improve current processes.

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Section: Supply and Demand Side Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Funding grant proposals for scientific research: retrospective analysis of scores by members of grant review panel

Graves

Barnett

Clarke

2011

BMJ

113

112

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“…Charness and Jackson's () discussed the notion of responsibility and guilt aversion in choices for others. Gong, Baron, and Kunreuther () argued that risk‐averse choices in groups were caused by blame avoidance and guilt aversion. Notably, the participants in Study 2 were more likely to select the Invest strategy if they considered it cautious, but independently of what they thought their group mates would choose.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cautious Defection: Group Representatives Cooperate and Risk Less than Individuals

Atanasov

Kunreuther

2015

Behavioral Decision Making

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Individuals often make decisions that affect groups, yet the propensities of group representatives are not as well understood than those of independent decision makers or deliberating groups. We ask how responsibility for group payoffs-in the absence of group deliberation-affects the choice. The experiment utilizes the Interdependent Security Dilemma paradigm. In its deterministic version, the game is identical to a finitely repeated Prisoner's Dilemma. In the stochastic version, potential losses are larger but uncertain, occurring with a predefined probability when one or both players choose to forgo investment in protection. Participants were assigned to play either as individuals, or as representatives of three-person groups, with each member's choices equally likely to determine the group's payoffs. In the deterministic condition, individuals were more likely to invest (cooperate) than group representatives (80% vs. 62% of rounds). In the stochastic condition, the pattern was reversed as representatives were slightly, but not significantly, more likely to invest than individuals (46% vs. 40%). The significant interaction effect suggested that group representatives were not only less cooperative but also more risk averse than individuals. A follow-up study supported this account by showing participants who construed the invest strategy as low-risk than those who perceived this strategy to be high risk. Overall, group representatives exhibited a tendency to act more competitively and more cautiously than individuals acting alone.

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“…Additionally, Gong et al examined the degree of cooperation both in individuals and groups under resource size uncertainty using two versions of the PD: one Stochastic Prisoner’s Dilemma (SPD) and one Deterministic Prisoner’s Dilemma (DPD) [ 44 , 45 ]. On the SPD, the outcomes of strategies are uncertain with known probabilistic outcomes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A dual-process approach to cooperative decision-making under uncertainty

2022

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Cooperative behaviors are typically investigated using social dilemmas inserted into scenarios with well-known characteristics. Nonetheless, in real life, group members may be uncertain about what others will decide (social uncertainty) and the characteristics of the dilemma itself (environmental uncertainty). Previous studies have shown that uncertainty reduces the willingness to cooperate. Dual-process approaches to cooperation have given rise to two different views. Some authors argue that deliberation is needed to overrule selfish motives, whereas others argue that intuition favors cooperation. In this work, our goal was to investigate the role of intuitive mental processing on cooperation in a prisoner’s dilemma game involving uncertainty. Our results showed that participants cooperated less with their counterparts as the number of rounds progressed, suggesting a learning process and that intuitive mental processing in the first 50 rounds appears to favor cooperation under both deterministic and stochastic conditions. These results may help clarify the literature’s mixed effects regarding cognitive processing manipulation on cooperation. Developing a better understanding of these effects may improve strategies in social problems involving cooperation under uncertainty and cognitive constraints.

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Why do groups cooperate more than individuals to reduce risks?

Cited by 9 publications

References 15 publications

Funding grant proposals for scientific research: retrospective analysis of scores by members of grant review panel

Funding grant proposals for scientific research: retrospective analysis of scores by members of grant review panel

Cautious Defection: Group Representatives Cooperate and Risk Less than Individuals

A dual-process approach to cooperative decision-making under uncertainty

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