Eye Gaze Patterns of Decision Process in Prosocial Behavior.

Anastasia Peshkovskaya,Mikhail Myagkov

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2020.525087

Abstract

Understanding human behavior remains a grand challenge across disciplines. We used eye tracking to investigate how visual perception is associated with a strategic behavior in the decision process. Gaze activity and eye movement patterns were measured in 14 human participants with different decision strategies. We also employed a social domain to force strategic behavior. We find that social interaction significantly improves the level of cooperation, prosocial decisions, and overall cooperative strategy in experiment participants. Gaze behavior in individuals with a cooperative strategy is characterized by a greater number of fixations and frequent gaze returns to the scanned areas. On the contrary, individuals with a non-cooperative strategy approach decision-making task stimuli in a distinct way with long-duration fixations and a low number of gaze returns to the areas already scanned. Social domain, which enhances cooperation and prosocial behavior, makes participants more attentive to the task stimuli in our experiments. Moreover, prolonged gaze at the area of cooperative choice testifies in favor of the cooperative decision.

Highlights

Eye tracking is widely used to study cognition based on visual perception (Kahneman and Beatty, 1966; Schwedes and Wentura, 2012; Dalmaso et al, 2017; Eckstein et al, 2017)
We used eye tracking technology and the prisoner’s dilemma together to investigate decision making and features of visual perception associated with strategic experience, with prosocial, cooperative strategy
We suggest that social domain, which enhances cooperative behavior in Cooperators made them more attentive to the task (PD) stimuli

Summary

Introduction

Eye tracking is widely used to study cognition based on visual perception (Kahneman and Beatty, 1966; Schwedes and Wentura, 2012; Dalmaso et al, 2017; Eckstein et al, 2017). As the theoretical framework for understanding human decision making, a social dilemma game is employed frequently as it represents human interactions in a variety of settings. The prisoner’s dilemma is the most commonly employed game in behavioral and psychological studies (Kieslich and Hilbig, 2014; Peshkovskaya et al, 2018; Haesevoets et al, 2020) due to its potential to interpret the emergence and survival of cooperative behavior (Doebeli and Hauert, 2005; Perc and Wang, 2010; Wang et al, 2012). We used eye tracking technology and the prisoner’s dilemma together to investigate decision making and features of visual perception associated with strategic experience, with prosocial, cooperative strategy.

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Methods

Conclusion