Abstract
Roles of emotion in decision-making have been attracting attention in neuroeconomics and behavioral game theory. We mathematically demonstrate that “emotion interference”, a recently-discovered psychological phenomenon [1] helps to solve social dilemma in a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma game. Furthermore, the present theory also accounts for the violation of Savage’s sure-thing principle in the prisoner’s dilemma [2]. Furthermore, it is also explained that why people in the society with higher social mobility are more cooperative. Relations of the present work to recently evolving fields of neuroeconomics and quantum decision theory are discussed.
Highlights
Even selfish agents often cooperate to their mutual benefit
We mathematically demonstrate that “emotion interference”, a recently-discovered psychological phenomenon [1] helps to solve social dilemma in a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma game
Regarding the non-social factors enhancing cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD), Shafir and Tversky [2] reported that in a one-shot PD game many participants compete when they know their opponent has competed and when they know their opponent has cooperated, but cooperate when they do not know their opponent’s response. This psychological phenomenon is referred to as the “disjunction effect”, which indicates that people violate the Surething principle proposed for the criterion of rational decision making [10]
Summary
Even selfish agents often cooperate to their mutual benefit. why cooperation emerges is hard to solve. To date, little is known regarding how to solve social dilemma in the PD without introducing these social/societal devices This issue is puzzling, because even in one-shot anonymous situations, non-negligible portions of people cooperate [8,9]. The violation of the sure-thing princeple in the PD increases cooperation when people do not know whether the opponent is a cooperator or not, without introducing the social devices such as punishment, reputation, and/or reciprocity (see [9] for a recent replication of this effect) This psychological bias, the disjunction effect, may enhance mutual cooperation in societies with high degrees of social mobility where people do not know whether opponents are cooperative or not, which has been a puzzling societal phenomenon [11].
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