Conny Wollbrant

Tangible Temptation in the Social Dilemma: Cash, cooperation, and self-control

The social dilemma may contain, within the individual, a self-control conflict between urges to act selfishly and better judgment to cooperate. Examining the argument from the perspective of temptation, we pair the public good game with treatments that vary the degree to which money is abstract (merely numbers on-screen) or tangible (tokens or cash). We also include psychometric measures of self-control and impulsivity. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find in the treatments that render money more tangible a stronger positive association between cooperation and self-control—and a stronger negative association between cooperation and impulsivity. Our results shed light on the conditions under which self-control matters for cooperation.

Commentary: Fairness is intuitive

Cappelen et al. (2015) open their paper, “Fairness is intuitive,” with the observation, “A key question in the social sciences is whether it is intuitive to behave in a fair manner or whether fair behavior requires active self-control” (p. 2). They purport to offer “evidence showing that fair behavior is intuitive to most people” (p. 1). Their premise is that deciding by intuition is faster than deciding by deliberation. While this premise in and on itself is rather uncontroversial—the conclusion that they draw from it is not: “Since a decision that relies on intuition is typically made faster than a decision that relies on deliberation, the response time of a fair decision relative to a selfish decision provides an important indication of the intuitiveness of fair behavior” (p. 2). This reasoning, in fact, amounts to a reverse inference fallacy1. “Intuitive” may mean “fast,” but this would not imply that “fast” means “intuitive.” However, we may ask, under which empirical conditions might we be allowed to draw the inference of “intuitive” from “fast”? Naturally, these conditions would require that “fast” rule out “deliberative.” To achieve this, we would need information beyond relative response speed alone—such as absolute decision times. And this begs the question, which range of decision times would rule out “deliberative”—or at the very least, render it improbable? Although the precise cut-off for deliberative decisions may be difficult to establish (see e.g., Schneider and Shiffrin, 1977; Posner and Rothbart, 1998), it is clear that an individual, if given a few seconds, may have sufficient time to reflect consciously—and ample time, if given more than thirty. Responses made at those speeds ought thus not be taken as “intuitive” prima facie, on the basis of the response time data alone. Unfortunately, the authors make just this mistake. Cappelen et al. (2015) find that “fair” decisions in a dictator game are faster than are “selfish” decisions, from which they infer that the fair decision is the more intuitive (e.g., Figure 2, p. 4). However, fair decisions took on average 38.4 s, and unfair decisions on average 48.5. It would seem, then, that both decision categories are fairly slow—and neither would appear unlikely to be characterized by deliberative processes. We may speculate about sources of the difference in mean response times, but intuitive as opposed to deliberative decision making is but one out of multiple possible explanations. Another explanation, for example, could be differences in degrees of deliberation. That is, individuals who deliberated more extensively might have reached a selfish decision, whereas individuals who deliberated less—but who did deliberate nonetheless—might have arrived at a fair choice. It is even possible, in this scenario, that the impulsive response is selfish—as some prior literature has suggested (e.g., Martinsson et al., 2012; Achtziger et al., 2015). The spontaneous response may then have been overruled by controlled deliberation, which might have been overturned yet again by even more extensive deliberation. In other words, individuals might have experienced an initial proclivity, changed their mind, and then changed their mind once again. As this possible scenario shows, it would be very difficult, to assign “fair” as opposed to “selfish” responses to intuition over deliberation. Although Cappelen et al. (2015) make the valuable point of distinguishing conceptually between actual decision time and overall measured response time—which encompasses also reading time and decision implementation time—their distinction does not salvage their conclusion. Indeed, their measured response times include the time spent on reading and comprehending the instructions, but any such activity—by its very nature—would require some degree of deliberation. Therefore, it would not be possible subsequently—on the basis of relative response times alone—to distinguish between intuitive and deliberative decision processes2. A very fast decision, for example, may be the product of deliberation during the preceding reading and comprehension steps. Cappelen et al. (2015) build on the work by Rand et al. (2012, 2014), who fall into similar traps. Rand et al. (2012, 2014) argue that time-pressure promotes “cooperation,” and that this amounts to evidence for the notion that cooperation is intuitive3. However, subjects in their time-pressure treatments had adequate time to deliberate—median response times were 6–13 s, across studies. As Myrseth and Wollbrant (2015) argue, this calls into question the meaning of the time-pressure treatments. Although Rand et al. (2012, 2014) also show that cooperation is negatively associated with response time, a closer examination of their data, in which average cooperation rates are plotted against response times, reveals that the pattern is non-linear and generally unclear (Myrseth and Wollbrant, 2015). In fact, when examined locally, there appears to be a positive association between response times and cooperation, among decisions made within 4 s4. A negative pattern emerges for slower decisions. The data from Rand et al. (2012, 2014) thus fail to provide meaningful evidence for the hypothesis that cooperation is intuitive rather than deliberative. More generally, we would call for greater caution in the interpretation of response time data. Although often fast, intuition can also be slow, and, conversely for deliberation—although often slow, it can also be fast (within limits). It is therefore not straightforward to rely on response times—or on experimental time pressure treatments—to disentangle intuition from deliberation in economic decision making.

Cooperation in Social Dilemmas: The Necessity of Seeing Self-Control Conflict

When facing the opportunity to allocate resources between oneself and others, individuals may experience a self-control conflict between urges to act selfishly and preferences to act pro-socially. We explore the domain of conditional cooperation, and we test the hypothesis that increased expectations about others’ average contribution increases own contributions to public goods more when self-control is high than when it is low. We pair a subtle framing technique with a public goods experiment. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that conditionally cooperative behavior is stronger (i.e., less imperfect) when expectations of high contributions are accompanied by high levels of self-control.Individuals in a social dilemma may experience a self-control conflict between urges to act selfishly and their 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 for individuals in the treatment that raised the relative likelihood of perceiving conflict, but not associated with self-control in the treatment that lowered the likelihood. These results help advance our understanding of the role of self-control in social interaction.

Cooperation and social classes: evidence from Colombia

We investigate the relationship between social class belonging and contributions to local public goods. By utilizing the social class classifications in Colombia and an experimental design based on the strategy method, we can both study contributions to public goods and classify subjects into contribution types. We find similar contribution levels between high and medium-low social classes and also similar distributions of contributor types. However, low social class members conditionally contribute a significantly higher level than high social class members. This has implications for policymakers, who may need to consider differential policy schemes for locally provided public goods.

Models inconsistent with altruism cannot explain the evolution of human cooperation

The article “Intuition, deliberation, and the evolution of cooperation,” by Bear and Rand (1), uses game theoretic models to examine the role of intuition and deliberation in human cooperation. The premise is that dual processes characterize human social decision making: “(i) automatic, intuitive processes that are relatively effortless but inflexible; and (ii) controlled, deliberative processes that are relatively effortful but flexible” (1). The objective is to “provide a formal theoretical framework for considering the question of whether prosociality is intuitive or whether it requires self-control,” and the article concludes that “evolution never favors strategies for which deliberation increases cooperation” (1). However, the evolutionary model suffers from a serious shortcoming; it precludes the survival of altruistic individuals—thought to represent a major share of human populations (2). It is therefore not suitable for addressing whether human cooperative behavior is intuitive.

Naïve and Capricious: Stumbling into the Ring of Self-Control Conflict

We model self-control conflict as a stochastic struggle of an agent against a visceral influence, which impels the agent to act sub-optimally. The agent holds costly pre-commitment technology to avoid the conflict altogether and may decide whether to procure pre-commitment or to confront the visceral influence. We examine naive expectations for the strength of the visceral influence; underestimating the visceral influence may lead the agent to exaggerate the expected utility of resisting temptation, and so mistakenly forego pre-commitment. Our analysis reveals conditions under which higher willpower – and lower visceral influence – reduces welfare. We further demonstrate that lowering risk aversion could reduce welfare. The aforementioned results call into question certain policy measures aimed at helping people improve their own behavior.

Depletion Influences Restraint, But Does It Influence Conflict Identification? Expanding on Osgood and Muraven (2015)

In their 2015 article, Osgood and Muraven showed that cognitive depletion reduces prosocial behaviors but not prosocial attitudes. We expand on the authors’ interpretation by relating their results to recent theorizing on the relationship between prosocial behavior and self-control. This framework distinguishes between the proclivity to identify self-control conflict and the capacity to exercise restraint. Osgood and Muravens findings can be interpreted as evidence that cognitive depletion in social contexts fails to influence a necessary condition for identifying self-control conflict. However, the results do not yet allow us to conclude that depletion influences capacity to exercise restraint. Further work is needed to understand the mechanisms by which cognitive depletion influences prosocial behavior.

Nudging and pro-environmental behaviour

This study explores how nudging instruments are used to encourage environmentally friendly behavior within energy consumption, waste management and resource efficiency. The study results provide ve ...

Gender and cooperative preferences on five continents

Evidence of gender differences in cooperation in social dilemmas is inconclusive. This paper experimentally elicits unconditional contributions, a contribution vector (cooperative preferences), and beliefs about the level of others’ contributions in variants of the public goods game. We show that existing inconclusive results can be understood and completely explained when controlling for beliefs and underlying cooperative preferences. Robustness checks based on data from around 450 additional independent observations around the world confirm our main empirical results: Women are significantly more often classified as conditionally cooperative than men, while men are more likely to be free riders. Beliefs play an important role in shaping unconditional contributions, and they seem to be more malleable or sensitive to subtle cues for women than for men.

The Intermediary Role of Microloan Officers: Evidence from Ethiopia

Microfinance institutions are key financial intermediaries between donors and borrowers in developing countries. Loan officers are crucial for establishing and maintaining the relationship between borrowers and microfinance institutions. This paper studies the impact of loan officers on the loan portfolio. We use a survey and choice experiment of 800 loan officers to estimate loan officers’ preferences over loan allocation. We investigate how these preferences are affected by the organizational structure of the microfinance institution, for example, incentive provision. We pay special attention to monitoring of borrowers and loan officer discretion. The most important determinants of loan allocation are related to the financial viability of microfinance institutions rather than the pro-social mission of microfinance. We derive recommendations for the governance of microfinance institutions.