Adam Bear

Intuition, deliberation, and the evolution of cooperation

Significance The role of intuition versus deliberation in human cooperation has received widespread attention from experimentalists across the behavioral sciences in recent years. Yet a formal theoretical framework for addressing this question has been absent. Here, we introduce an evolutionary game-theoretic model of dual-process agents playing prisoner’s dilemma games. We find that, across many types of environments, evolution only ever favors agents who (i) always intuitively defect, or (ii) are intuitively predisposed to cooperate but who, when deliberating, switch to defection if it is in their self-interest to do so. Our model offers a clear explanation for why we should expect deliberation to promote selfishness rather than cooperation and unifies apparently contradictory empirical results regarding intuition and cooperation. 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 dual-process 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 game-theoretic 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 one-shot 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 sometimes-conflicting empirical results, and shed light on the nature of human cognition and social decision making.

Co-Evolution of Cooperation and Cognition: The Impact of Imperfect Deliberation and Context-Sensitive Intuition

How does cognitive sophistication impact cooperation? We explore this question using a model of the co-evolution of cooperation and cognition. In our model, agents confront social dilemmas and coordination games, and make decisions using intuition or deliberation. Intuition is automatic and effortless, but relatively (although not necessarily completely) insensitive to context. Deliberation, conversely, is costly but relatively (although not necessarily perfectly) sensitive to context. We find that regardless of the sensitivity of intuition and imperfection of deliberation, deliberating undermines cooperation in social dilemmas; whereas deliberating can increase cooperation in coordination games if intuition is sufficiently sensitive. Furthermore, when coordination games are sufficiently likely, selection favors a strategy whose intuitive response ignores the contextual cues available and cooperates across contexts. Thus we see how simple cognition can arise from active selection for simplicity, rather than just be forced to be simple due to cognitive constraints. Finally, we find that when deliberation is imperfect, the favored strategy increases cooperation in social dilemmas (as a result of reducing deliberation) as the benefit of cooperation to the recipient increases.

A Simple Task Uncovers a Postdictive Illusion of Choice

Do people know when, or whether, they have made a conscious choice? Here, we explore the possibility that choices can seem to occur before they are actually made. In two studies, participants were asked to quickly choose from a set of options before a randomly selected option was made salient. Even when they believed that they had made their decision prior to this event, participants were significantly more likely than chance to report choosing the salient option when this option was made salient soon after the perceived time of choice. Thus, without participants’ awareness, a seemingly later event influenced choices that were experienced as occurring at an earlier time. These findings suggest that, like certain low-level perceptual experiences, the experience of choice is susceptible to “postdictive” influence and that people may systematically overestimate the role that consciousness plays in their chosen behavior.

Cyclical Population Dynamics of Automatic Versus Controlled Processing: An Evolutionary Pendulum

Psychologists, neuroscientists, and economists often conceptualize decisions as arising from processes that lie along a continuum from automatic (i.e., “hardwired” or overlearned, but relatively inflexible) to controlled (less efficient and effortful, but more flexible). Control is central to human cognition, and plays a key role in our ability to modify the world to suit our needs. Given its advantages, reliance on controlled processing may seem predestined to increase within the population over time. Here, we examine whether this is so by introducing an evolutionary game theoretic model of agents that vary in their use of automatic versus controlled processes, and in which cognitive processing modifies the environment in which the agents interact. We find that, under a wide range of parameters and model assumptions, cycles emerge in which the prevalence of each type of processing in the population oscillates between 2 extremes. Rather than inexorably increasing, the emergence of control often creates conditions that lead to its own demise by allowing automaticity to also flourish, thereby undermining the progress made by the initial emergence of controlled processing. We speculate that this observation may have relevance for understanding similar cycles across human history, and may lend insight into some of the circumstances and challenges currently faced by our species.

Mistiming of thought and perception predicts delusionality

Significance The nature and origin of delusional belief in illnesses like schizophrenia has been an active topic of research for decades. Yet relatively less work has been devoted to relating this high-level phenomenon to lower-level perceptual mechanisms. We consider whether an illusory reversal in the perception of when a prediction and observation occur in time predicts the presence of delusion-like ideation. We find evidence for such a relationship, suggesting that specific perceptual deficits in how people experience the timing of their thoughts might be a contributor to delusionality. Detecting these perceptual abnormalities early on may therefore prove fruitful for understanding, diagnosing, and treating certain forms of mental illness. The timing of thoughts and perceptions plays an essential role in belief formation. Just as people can experience in-the-moment perceptual illusions, however, they can also be deceived about how events unfold in time. Here, we consider how a particular type of temporal distortion, in which the apparent future influences “earlier” events in conscious awareness, might affect people’s most fundamental beliefs about themselves and the world. Making use of a task that has been shown to elicit such reversals in the temporal experience of prediction and observation, we find that people who are more prone to think that they predicted an event that they actually already observed are also more likely to report holding delusion-like beliefs. Moreover, this relationship appears to be specific to how people experience prediction and is not explained by domain-general deficits in temporal discrimination. These findings may help uncover low-level perceptual mechanisms underlying delusional belief or schizotypy more broadly and may ultimately prove useful as a tool for identifying those at risk for psychotic illness.

T84. DO SIMILAR COGNITIVE MECHANISMS ENCOURAGE DELUSION-LIKE IDEATION AND BELIEF IN FAKE NEWS?

Abstract Background Increasingly, the positive symptoms of psychosis are recognized as being on a continuum with phenomena that are experienced by many members of the general population (i.e., non-clinical samples). Delusions are no exception. These fixed false beliefs, which are common in individuals with psychosis, are echoed by inflexible false beliefs in the general population that have delusion-like qualities (e.g., belief in clairvoyance). In a series of studies, we sought to determine whether belief in a particular type of disinformation (fake news) might represent a point on the same continuum as delusions and delusion-like ideation. To this end, we examined whether individuals who endorsed more delusion-like ideation were also more prone to believing fake news. We then examined whether the cognitive mechanisms behind any relationship between delusion-like ideation and fake news were similar to those associated with delusion-like ideation generally. Methods 503 participants were recruited using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants completed a test of ability to discriminate real from fake news along with several individual difference measures. These included measures of delusion-like ideation (the Peters et al. Delusion Inventory [PDI]), engagement in analytic thinking (the Cognitive Reflection Test [CRT]), and the degree to which one values evidence in forming and revising beliefs (the Actively Open-Minded Thinking Questionnaire [AOT]). Mediation tests were conducted using the PROCESS macro for SPSS (model 4, with 5000 bootstrapped samples and bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals). Results Delusion-like ideation was positively correlated with belief in fake news (rho(501) = .20, p < .001). The relationship between belief in fake news and delusion-like ideation was partially explained by lower levels of analytic thinking ability (as measured by the CRT; completely standardized 95% CI = [.02 .07]) and lower evidence valuation (as measured by AOT scores; completely standardized 95% CI = [.01 .06]). These indirect effects accounted for 39% of the relationship between delusion-like ideation and belief in fake news. Delusion-like ideation and belief in real news were not correlated (rho(501) = 0.01, p = .927). Discussion Consistent with the notion that belief in fake news represents a point on the same continuum as belief in delusional and delusion-like ideas, belief in fake news was associated with increased endorsement of delusion-like ideation. This relationship was partially explained by factors previously associated with delusions and delusion-like ideation (e.g., lower engagement in analytic thinking, lower valuation of evidence in belief formation and revision). The link between delusion-proneness and belief in fake news (which was established for the first time in these studies) may prove useful in helping to inoculate the public against the deleterious effects of purposely-spread misinformation. Identifying individuals who might be at high risk of falling for fake news is an essential first step in this direction. The present results suggest that individuals who endorse delusion-like ideation may be one population toward which interventions aimed at preventing belief in misinformation might usefully be aimed.

Reply to Myrseth and Wollbrant: Our model is consistent with altruism, and helps to explain its evolution.

Myrseth and Wollbrandt’s critique (1) of our paper “Intuition, deliberation and the evolution of cooperation” (2) is incorrect. They claim that our model “precludes the survival of altruistic individuals” and thus “precludes altruism in equilibrium” (where they define “altruism” as cooperating even in one-shot games).