Abstract
Social projection is the tendency to project one’s own characteristics onto others. This phenomenon can potentially explain cooperation in prisoner’s dilemma experiments and other social dilemmas. The social projection hypothesis has recently been formalized for symmetric games as co-action equilibrium and for general games as consistent evidential equilibrium. These concepts have been proposed to predict choice behavior in experimental one-shot games. We test the predictions of the co-action equilibrium concept in a simple binary minimizer game experiment. We find no evidence of social projection.
Highlights
In social psychology, social projection is the well-established tendency of people to project their own preferences, beliefs and behaviors onto other members of their own social groups[1]
CAE is a special case of consistent evidential equilibrium in which the game is symmetric with two players, both of whom use an identity social projection function
The explanatory power of the social projection hypothesis for choice behavior has been demonstrated in several social dilemma games, the ultimate test of a scientific hypothesis is a test of its ability to generate ex ante predictions for as-yet-unobserved phenomena
Summary
Social projection is the well-established tendency of people to project their own preferences, beliefs and behaviors onto other members of their own social groups[1]. Some researchers have proposed evidential reasoning as a rational way to choose a strategy by deliberating on the consequences of one’s own hypothetical choices in combination with the resulting choices of others According to this view, a player in a prisoner’s dilemma situation should reason that if she cooperates, her opponent will be likely to cooperate as well, whereas if she defects, he will be likely to defect. A player in a prisoner’s dilemma situation should reason that if she cooperates, her opponent will be likely to cooperate as well, whereas if she defects, he will be likely to defect Comparing her own payoffs in the two resulting strategy profiles, (C, C) and (D, D), will lead the player to choose cooperation. CAE is a special case of consistent evidential equilibrium in which the game is symmetric with two players, both of whom use an identity social projection function
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