TY - JOUR
T1 - Exposure to superfluous information reduces cooperation and increases antisocial punishment in reputation-based interactions
AU - dos Santos, Miguel
AU - Braithwaite, Victoria A.
AU - Wedekind, Claus
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 dos Santos, Braithwaite and Wedekind.
PY - 2014/8/1
Y1 - 2014/8/1
N2 - Human cooperation is often based on reputation gained from previous interactions with third parties. Such reputation can be built on generous or punitive actions, and both, one's own reputation and the reputation of others have been shown to influence decision making in experimental games that control for confounding variables. Here we test how reputation-based cooperation and punishment react to a disruption of the cognitive processing in different kinds of helping games with observers. Saying a few superfluous words before each interaction was used to possibly interfere with working memory. In a first set of experiments, where reputation could only be based on generosity, the disturbance reduced the frequency of cooperation and lowered mean final payoffs. In a second set of experiments where reputation could only be based on punishment, disturbance increased the frequency of antisocial punishment (i.e., of punishing those who helped) and reduced the frequency of punishing defectors. Our findings suggest that working memory can easily be constraining in reputation-based interactions within experimental games, even if these games are based on a few simple rules with a visual display that provides all the information the subjects need to play the strategies predicted from current theory. Our findings also highlight a weakness of experimental games, namely that they can be very sensitive to environmental variation and that quantitative conclusions about antisocial punishment or other behavioral strategies can easily be misleading.
AB - Human cooperation is often based on reputation gained from previous interactions with third parties. Such reputation can be built on generous or punitive actions, and both, one's own reputation and the reputation of others have been shown to influence decision making in experimental games that control for confounding variables. Here we test how reputation-based cooperation and punishment react to a disruption of the cognitive processing in different kinds of helping games with observers. Saying a few superfluous words before each interaction was used to possibly interfere with working memory. In a first set of experiments, where reputation could only be based on generosity, the disturbance reduced the frequency of cooperation and lowered mean final payoffs. In a second set of experiments where reputation could only be based on punishment, disturbance increased the frequency of antisocial punishment (i.e., of punishing those who helped) and reduced the frequency of punishing defectors. Our findings suggest that working memory can easily be constraining in reputation-based interactions within experimental games, even if these games are based on a few simple rules with a visual display that provides all the information the subjects need to play the strategies predicted from current theory. Our findings also highlight a weakness of experimental games, namely that they can be very sensitive to environmental variation and that quantitative conclusions about antisocial punishment or other behavioral strategies can easily be misleading.
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U2 - 10.3389/fevo.2014.00041
DO - 10.3389/fevo.2014.00041
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84962778799
SN - 2296-701X
VL - 2
JO - Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
JF - Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
IS - AUG
M1 - 41
ER -