Toke Reinholt Fosgaard

Empathy as a neuropsychological heuristic in social decision-making

Decision-making in social dilemmas is suggested to rely on three factors: the valuation of a choice option, the relative judgment of two or more choice alternatives, and individual factors affecting the ease at which judgments and decisions are made. Here, we test whether empathy—an individual’s relative ability to understand others’ thoughts, emotions, and intentions—acts as an individual factor that alleviates conflict resolution in social decision-making. We test this by using a framed, iterated prisoners’ dilemma (PD) game in two settings. In a behavioral experiment, we find that individual differences in empathic ability (the Empathy Quotient, EQ) were related to lower response times in the PD game, suggesting that empathy is related to faster social choices, independent of whether they choose to cooperate or defect. In a subsequent neuroimaging experiment, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we find that EQ is positively related to individual differences in the engagement of brain structures implemented in mentalizing, including the precuneus, superior temporal sulcus, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These results suggest that empathy is related to the individual difference in the engagement of mentalizing in social dilemmas and that this is related to the efficiency of decision-making in social dilemmas.

WHY DO WE LIE? A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE DISHONESTY LITERATURE

Over the last decade, a massive body of research has been devoted to uncovering human dishonesty. In the present paper, we review more than a hundred papers from this literature and provide a comprehensive overview by first listing the existing theoretical frameworks, and then covering the common empirical approaches, synthesizing the demographic and personal characteristics of those who cheat, identifying the behavioural mechanisms found that affect dishonesty and finally we finish by discussing how the empirical evidence fit theory. Overall, the review concludes that many people behave dishonestly, but also that it is a highly malleable behavior sensitive to elements such as decision contexts, behaviour of others, state of mind and depletion. The review can be used as an overview of the dishonesty literature or as a guide or work of reference for selected topics of interest.

Nudge for (the Public) Good: How Defaults Can Affect Cooperation

In this paper we test the effect of non-binding defaults on the level of contribution to a public good. We manipulate the default numbers appearing on the decision screen to nudge subjects toward a free-rider strategy or a perfect conditional cooperator strategy. Our results show that the vast majority of our subjects did not adopt the default numbers, but their stated strategy was affected by the default. Moreover, we find that our manipulation spilled over to a subsequent repeated public goods game where default was not manipulated. Here we found that subjects who previously saw the free rider default were significantly less cooperative than those who saw the perfect conditional cooperator default.

Consumer or citizen? Prosocial behaviors in markets and non-markets

While much prosocial behavior has traditionally taken place in non-market contexts, such as families, clans, and social associations, it is in increasingly brought into the market context. For example, companies increasingly promote their products and services by engaging in charitable giving and policy makers increasingly push for the implementation of market-driven prosocial initiatives. However, this trend has occurred without being informed by evidence on how the market influences individuals’ engagement in prosocial behavior. Using a public goods game that simulates a market and a non-market context, we analyze prosocial behavior and its psychological underpinnings across these two contexts. First, we find that prosocial behavior occurs at lower levels in markets than non-markets. Second, we find that individuals’ beliefs about prosocial norms are more important for prosocial behavior in markets than non-markets, while the opposite is true for their autonomous motivation towards prosocial behavior. This suggests that decision-makers need to adjust the means to foster prosocial behavior, depending on the institutional context deemed appropriate for specific prosocial behaviors.