social preferences, beliefs, and cooperation in games with positive and negative outcome valence...

Social preferences, beliefs, and cooperation in games with positive and

negative outcome valence

Maik M.P. Theelen

Robert Böhm

RWTH Aachen University

Ryan O. Murphy

Kurt A. Ackermann

ETH Zurich

16th International Conference on Social Dilemmas, 2015

Background

Real-world social dilemmas often have negative outcomes.

Böhm & Theelen (submitted)Repeated PGG, positive vs. negative outcomesMore cooperation when there were negative outcomes

Murphy & Ackermann (submitted)

Social preferences, beliefs, and cooperation in games with positive and negative outcome valenceMaik Theelen | 16th International Conference on Social Dilemmas | 23.06.2015

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Social Preferences

Beliefs- About other’s cooperative

behavior- About other’s social

preferences

Cooperative Behavior

Research Questions

Does outcome valence lead to differences in cooperation, SVO and beliefs?

Do personality characteristics explain possible shifts in cooperation, SVO and beliefs between positive and negative outcome domains?

Honesty-Humility, HEXACO (Lee & Ashton, 2004; Ashton & Lee, 2009)

Loss-Aversion (Kahneman & Tversky, 1984)


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Design & Experimental sequence


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Positive Outcome Negative OutcomePersonality

Characteristics

SVO SVO Beliefs

Cooperation & Beliefs SVO SVO

BeliefsCooperation &

Beliefs • Honesty-Humility• Loss-Aversion

• 96 students (45 women, age = 22.94)

• Within-subject (counterbalanced)

• Cooperation, SVO and beliefs measures were incentivized

SVO measures

Slider Measure (Murphy, Ackermann & Handgraaf, 2011)


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SVO Positive

SVO measures

Slider Measure (Murphy, Ackermann & Handgraaf, 2011)


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SVO Positive

SVO Negative

One-Shot Public Good Game


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Positive Outcome Negative Outcome

Endowment per round 20 20

Public account 0 -240

MPCR 0.5 0.5

Payoff range in tokens 10 / 50 -50 / -10

Group Size 4

Exchange rate 100 tokens = 1,50 euro

Personality Characteristics

Honesty-Humility (HEXACO)Example:

» I wouldn’t pretend to like someone just to get that person to do favors for me.

» 5-point Likert scale

Loss AversionExample Item 1o Nothing happens (Status Quo)o 50% chance to win 100 Euro and 50% chance to lose 100 euro


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Succeeding items increased by 20

Does outcome valence lead to differences in cooperation, SVO and beliefs?


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Descriptives


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Mean (SD)

Positive Outcome Negative Outcome

SVO 29.93 (12.55) 29.26 (12.34)

SVO Beliefs 29.93 (10.72) 27.6 (10.06)

Cooperation 7.09 (6.05) 7.66 (6.23)

Cooperation Beliefs 8.1 (4.6) 8.63 (4.67)

Cooperation beliefs pos – neg


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Cooperation Beliefs Positive

Co

ope

ratio

n B

elie

fs N

eg

ativ

e

Do personality characteristics explain possible shifts in Cooperation, SVO and Beliefs between

positive and negative outcome domains?


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Cooperation Belief diff – Cooperation diff


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Difference score = negative outcome – positive outcome

Cooperation Belief Difference

Co

ope

ratio

n D

iffe

ren

ce

Indirect Effect Honesty-Humility


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Honesty-Humility

Cooperation beliefs difference

Cooperation difference

Indirect effectb = 0.128, BCa 95% CI [0.038,0.244]k2 = 0.138, BCa 95% CI [0.039,0.270]

+ +

Indirect Effect Loss Aversion


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Loss Aversion

Cooperation beliefs difference

Cooperation difference

Indirect effectb = 0.105, BCa 95% CI [-0.004, 0.267]k2 = 0.111, BCa 95% CI [0.009, 0.288]

+ +

Conclusion

Considerable amount of variance between positive and negative outcome measures

Shifts in cooperation beliefs explain shifts in cooperation.

Honesty-Humility and Loss-Aversion drives these differences in beliefs.


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Maik Theelen

RWTH Aachen University

Aachen, Germany

[email protected]

Thank you for your attention!

Design

96 students (45 women, age = 22.94) Within-subject design 4 sessions (counterbalanced) Written instruction (envelopes) Slider measure and PGG incentivized Duration: 1:15 (including payment) Average earning: € 11.10


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social preferences, beliefs, and cooperation in games with positive and negative outcome valence...

Documents

euro social preferences

negative outcome domains

international conference

beliefs measures

svo positivesvo negative

ackermann handgraaf

ashton lee

hexaco lee ashton