Selfish Decisions Research Articles

Beneficial effects of communicating intentions when delivering moral criticism: Cognitive and neural responses

People often do not accept criticism on their morality, especially when delivered by outgroup members. In two preregistered studies, we investigated whether people become more receptive to such negative feedback when feedback senders communicate their intention to help. Participants received negative feedback from ostensible others on their selfish (rather than altruistic) decisions in a donation task. We manipulated the identity of a feedback sender (ingroup vs. outgroup) and the intention that they provided for giving feedback. A sender either did not communicate any intentions, indicated the intention to help the feedback receiver improve, or communicated the intention to show moral superiority. We measured participants’ self-reported responses to the feedback (Study 1, N = 44) and additionally recorded an EEG in Study 2 (N = 34). Results showed that when no intentions were communicated, participants assumed worse intentions from outgroup senders than ingroup senders (Study 1). However, group membership had no significant effect once feedback senders made their intentions explicit. Moreover, across studies, when feedback senders communicated their intention to help, participants perceived feedback as less unfair compared with when senders tried to convey their moral superiority. Complementing these results, exploratory event-related potential results of Study 2 suggested that communicating the intention to help reduced participants’ attentional vigilance toward negative feedback messages on their morality (i.e., decreased P200 amplitudes). These results demonstrate the beneficial effects of communicating the intention to help when one tries to encourage others’ moral growth through criticism.

Do women receive less blame than men? Attribution of outcomes in a prosocial setting

We examine gender biases in the attribution of leaders’ outcomes to their choices versus luck. Leaders make unobservable investment choices that affect the payoffs of group members. High investment is costly to the leader but increases the probability of an outcome with a high payoff. We observe gender biases in the attribution of low outcomes. Low outcomes of male (female) leaders are attributed more to their selfish decisions (bad luck). These biases are driven by male evaluators. We find no gender differences in the attribution of high outcomes.

The social construction of ignorance: Experimental evidence

We experimentally study the social transmission of “inconvenient” information about the externalities generated by one's own decision. In the laboratory, we pair uninformed decision makers with informed senders. Compared to a setting where subjects can choose their information directly, we find that social interactions increase selfish decisions. On the supply side, senders suppress almost 30 percent of “inconvenient” information, driven by their own preferences for information and their beliefs about the decision maker's preferences. On the demand side, about one-third of decision makers avoids senders who transmit inconvenient information (“shooting the messenger”), which leads to assortative matching between information-suppressing senders and information-avoiding decision makers. Having more control over information generates opposing effects on behavior: selfish decision makers remain ignorant more often and donate less, while altruistic decision makers seek out informative senders and give more. We discuss applications to information sharing in social networks and to organizational design.

Distributed Generalized Nash Equilibrium Seeking: An Operator-Theoretic Perspective

Generalized games model interactions between a set of selfish decision makers, called <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">players</i> or <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">agents</i> , where both the objective function <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">and</i> the feasible decision set of each player may depend on strategies of the competitors. Such games arise, for example, when agents compete for a share of some common but limited resources. For instance, consider a set of vehicles sharing the road, set of radio channels competing for bandwidth, or set of companies servicing an economic market. They can each be modeled as players/agents in a game, competing for a portion of available resources, that is, road capacity, total bandwidth, or market share. As resources are limited, player choices are bound together by a coupling-capacity constraint. Essentially, in a generalized game, or one with coupling constraints, the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">set of available</i> choices an agent has depends on the choices of other agents. Thus, a player cannot simply optimize their own objective function without considering the decisions of the others, even though this objective might not depend on him or her. The relevant equilibrium (namely, the solution concept) for noncooperative decision making with coupling constraints is called a <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">generalized</i> Nash equilibrium (GNE).

Breastfeeding and contraception counseling: a qualitative study

BackgroundThe objectives of this qualitative study were to better understand women’s experiences regarding contraceptive choice, breastfeeding intentions and the relationship between the two. Women are routinely presented with counseling on breastfeeding and contraception throughout their prenatal and postpartum care, but little is published on patients’ own priorities, desires and experiences of this peripartum counseling. This article aims to address this gap in the literature.MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with patients in the immediate postpartum period. The interview guide explored: 1) timing and content of contraceptive counseling; 2) breastfeeding goals and expectations; 3) reasons for contraceptive choices; and 4) recommendations for counseling. Interview transcripts were coded to identify themes and analyzed.ResultsTwenty interviews were conducted. The participants were reflective of our patient population in the Bronx, with ninety percent using Medicaid for insurance and fifteen percent concerned about food security in the past month, well-validated questions reflective of poverty and socioeconomic status. Three themes emerged from the interviews: (1) using contraception was described as a selfish decision by the mother without benefit to the newborn; (2) women felt pressure to breastfeed and saw the inability to breastfeed as a personal failure; and (3) medical providers were viewed as more trustworthy when it came to information regarding breastfeeding as opposed to contraceptive options, where decisions relied on anecdotes from friends or family.ConclusionsMost decision-making regarding breastfeeding and contraception relied on the personal experiences of the participants and their friends and family. A clear need for support for women who are unable to breastfeed and education about the benefits of contraception for the newborn was identified.

Why Do We Punish?

Abstract. We investigated whether individuals’ punishment behavior aims at compensating for inflicted harm (i.e., retribution) or at deterring the offender from committing the offense again (i.e., deterrence) and whether punishment motives depend on the punishment system. Participants ( N = 149) assigned punishment for selfish decisions in a group resource allocation task under three conditions: Open punishment (the allocator is informed about the punishment, allowing for retribution and deterrence); hidden punishment (the allocator is not informed about the punishment, precluding deterrence); and unintentional offense (decision is made by the computer not the allocator, precluding retribution and deterrence). In line with retribution motives, participants assigned more punishment under hidden punishment compared to unintentional offense and open punishment. We found these differences in punishment between punishment conditions only under centralized punishment (i.e., punishment can only be executed by one group member), but not under decentralized punishment (i.e., each group member can punish).

Games in the Time of COVID-19: Promoting Mechanism Design for Pandemic Response

Most governments employ a set of quasi-standard measures to fight COVID-19, including wearing masks, social distancing, virus testing, contact tracing, and vaccination. However, combining these measures into an efficient holistic pandemic response instrument is even more involved than anticipated. We argue that some non-trivial factors behind the varying effectiveness of these measures are selfish decision making and the differing national implementations of the response mechanism. In this article, through simple games, we show the effect of individual incentives on the decisions made with respect to mask wearing, social distancing, and vaccination, and how these may result in sub-optimal outcomes. We also demonstrate the responsibility of national authorities in designing these games properly regarding data transparency, the chosen policies, and their influence on the preferred outcome. We promote a mechanism design approach: It is in the best interest of every government to carefully balance social good and response costs when implementing their respective pandemic response mechanism; moreover, there is no one-size-fits-all solution when designing an effective solution.

Are people more selfish after giving gifts?

AbstractHow people choose gifts is a widely studied topic, but what happens next is largely understudied. In two preregistered studies, one field experiment, and an analysis of secondary data, we show that giving gifts has a dark side, as it can negatively affect subsequent interpersonal behavior between givers and receivers. In Study 1, we found that giving a gift to one's romantic partner changes givers' interpretation of which behaviors constitute infidelity. Specifically, we found that givers (vs. nongivers) classified their questionable behaviors (e.g., sending a flirtatious text to someone other than their partner) less as a form of cheating on their partner. In Study 2, we examined how politely participants behave when delivering bad news to a friend. We found that givers (vs. nongivers) wrote significantly less polite messages to their friend. In Study 3, we tested real gifts that people give to friends and found givers (vs. nongivers) subsequently made more selfish decisions at their friends' expense. In all, our research refines the oft‐cited axiomatic assumption that gift giving strengthens relationships and illuminates the potential for future research to examine how decision making can alter interpersonal, romantic relationships.

Group identity in fairness decisions: Discrimination or inequality aversion?

This paper reports preliminary evidence from a pilot study (n=91, with 455 decisions) on issues of decision time and race in distributive fairness decisions in South Africa. We conduct a dictator game to gather data on transfer amounts and time taken for decisions, where dictators are paired with a series of partners with whom they either share or do not share race. Our results are not in line with the empirical evidence that suggests that impulsive decisions are fair: transfers in our sample increase with decision time, with fairer decisions taking longer than selfish decisions. We note significantly higher transfers to black receivers from black decision-makers. White dictators give more to white receivers in very short (<15 s) decisions, but when they take more time to decide, more is given to black versus white receivers. This race-based discrimination in transfers appears to be primarily motivated by inequality aversion: black receivers are (correctly) assumed to have lower income than their white peers. Although our sample is small, the evidence of willingness to reduce perceived race-based inequality has encouraging implications for redistributive policies in the country, and therefore warrants further investigation.

Decision Making in Star Networks With Incorrect Beliefs

Consider a Bayesian binary decision-making problem in star networks, where local agents make selfish decisions independently, and a fusion agent makes a final decision based on aggregated decisions and its own private signal. In particular, we assume all agents have private beliefs for the true prior probability, based on which they perform Bayesian decision making. We focus on the Bayes risk of the fusion agent and counterintuitively find that incorrect beliefs could achieve a smaller risk than that when agents know the true prior. It is of independent interest for sociotechnical system design that the optimal beliefs of local agents resemble human probability reweighting models from cumulative prospect theory. We also consider asymptotic characterization of the optimal beliefs and fusion agent's risk in the number of local agents. We find that the optimal risk of the fusion agent converges to zero exponentially fast as the number of local agents grows. Furthermore, having an identical constant belief is asymptotically optimal in the sense of the risk exponent. For additive Gaussian noise, the optimal belief turns out to be a simple function of only error costs and the risk exponent can be explicitly characterized.

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Diffused Pivotality

With Big Data, decisions made by machine learning algorithms depend on training data generated by many individuals. In an experiment, we identify the effect of varying individual responsibility for choices of an artificially intelligent algorithm. Across treatments, we manipulated the sources of training data and thus the impact of each individual's decisions on the algorithm. Reducing or diffusing pivotality for algorithmic choices increased the share of selfish decisions. Once the generated training data exclusively affected others' payoffs, individuals opted for more egalitarian payoff allocations. These results suggest that Big Data offers a moral wiggle room for selfish behavior.

Machiavelli Preferences Without Blame: Delegating Selfish vs. Generous Decisions in Dictator Games

Does the impulse to delegate a decision only arise when delegation mimics a selfish decision vs. a generous one? We address this question using a dictator experiment with two possible payment allocations and an option to delegate the payment decision to another player. Two delegation treatments are considered, one in which the delegation option is payoff-equivalent to a direct choice of a “selfish” allocation (better for the dictator, worse for the receiver) and another where it is equivalent to the direct choice of generous / equal payments. Dictators exhibit a significantly greater propensity to delegate in the selfish delegation treatment than in the generous delegation treatment. Results are consistent with “Machiavelli preferences” that only favor delegation when it promotes self-interested / other-harming outcomes.

Motivated misremembering of selfish decisions

People often prioritize their own interests, but also like to see themselves as moral. How do individuals resolve this tension? One way to both pursue personal gain and preserve a moral self-image is to misremember the extent of one’s selfishness. Here, we test this possibility. Across five experiments (N = 3190), we find that people tend to recall being more generous in the past than they actually were, even when they are incentivized to recall their decisions accurately. Crucially, this motivated misremembering effect occurs chiefly for individuals whose choices violate their own fairness standards, irrespective of how high or low those standards are. Moreover, this effect disappears under conditions where people no longer perceive themselves as responsible for their fairness violations. Together, these findings suggest that when people’s actions fall short of their personal standards, they may misremember the extent of their selfishness, thereby potentially warding off threats to their moral self-image.

Weak Control Approach to Consumer-Preferred Energy Management

This paper is devoted to a consumer-preferred community-level energy management system (CEMS), in which a system manager allows consumers their selfish decisions of power-saving while regulating the overall demand-supply imbalance. The key structure of the system is to weakly control consumers: the controller sends the allowable range of the power-saving amount to each consumer, which is modeled by a set-valued control signal. Then, the consumers decide the amount in the range based on their private preference. In this paper, we address the design problem of the controller that generates the set-valued control signals. The controller structure is based on internal model control, which plays the essential role of guaranteeing the consumer-independent stability and the worst-case control performance of the overall CEMS. Finally, a numerical experiment of the consumer-preferred CEMS is performed to demonstrate the design procedure of the controller and to show its effectiveness.

Moral Perceptions of Advised Actions

Can an organization avoid blame for an unpopular action when an adviser advises it to do it? We present experimental evidence suggesting this is the case—advice to be selfish substantially decreases punishment of being selfish. Further, this result is true despite advisers’ misaligned incentives, known to all: Through a relational contract incentive, advisers are motivated to tell the decision makers what they want to hear. Through incentivized elicitations, we find suggestive evidence that advice moves punishment by affecting beliefs of how necessary the selfish action was. In follow-up treatments, however, we show advice does not decrease punishment solely through a beliefs channel. Advice not only changes beliefs about what happened, but also the perceived morality of it. Finally, in treatments in which advisers are available, the data suggest selfish decision makers act more selfishly. This paper was accepted by Axel Ockenfels, behavioral economics.

Mechanisms for Cooperative Freight Routing: Incentivizing Individual Participation

The efficient use of the road network for freight transport has a big impact on travel times, pollution, and fuel consumption, as well as on the mobility of passenger vehicles. In today’s road network, truck drivers make uncoordinated selfish routing decisions, which may easily congest an initially uncongested route as many truck drivers make the same selfish decision by choosing the same route in an effort to minimize their travel time without accounting for the fact that others do the same, given the same available traffic information. In this paper, we propose a coordinated system for truck drivers, using monetary incentives and fees, to balance the traffic load and improve the overall traffic conditions and time delays experienced by both truck and passenger vehicle drivers. The basic characteristics of the mechanisms presented are that they are budget balanced, do not penalize the truck drivers compared to the user equilibrium, and they assume voluntary participation. Two models of voluntary participation are considered: weak and strong voluntary participation. In the first, each one of the drivers prefers all the drivers (including self) to participate in the mechanism than not. In the second model, each one of the truck drivers prefers to participate in the system, provided that all the others do. For each model of voluntary participation, an incentive mechanism is designed. A special emphasis is given to the fairness of the proposed mechanisms. The numerical examples are used to demonstrate the results and the efficiency of the solution techniques.

Attachment style predicts cooperation in intuitive but not deliberative response in one-shot public goods game.

Cooperation is an important prosocial behaviour that is of great significance to individuals and society. The social heuristics hypothesis (SHH) systematically explains how cooperation is interactively affected by intuitive and deliberative processes. On the one hand, the intuitive process can be either cooperative or selfish, which is determined by previous experience. On the other hand, the deliberative process could support either a cooperative decision or a selfish decision, depending on which strategy could maximise the current payoff. This research aims to investigate the mechanism of cooperation. Attachment style was selected as a proxy for previous experience to examine whether and how previous life experience shapes intuitive response. Time constraint (Studies 1 and 2) and cognitive load (Study 3) were manipulated to dissociate the intuitive and deliberative processes. In addition, cooperation was assessed by adopting one-shot public goods games. Results showed that attachment avoidance (Studies 1, 2, and 3) and attachment anxiety (Study 3) significantly predicted cooperation in the intuition condition, whereas these associations were insignificant in the deliberation condition (Studies 1, 2, and 3). These findings provide further support for the SHH and shed new light on the mechanism of cooperation.

Friends and foes: Neural correlates of prosocial decisions with peers in adolescence

Adolescence is a critical period for social orientation to peers and for developing social skills in interactions with peers. In the current study we examined the neural correlates of prosocial decisions for friends and disliked peers, and their links with participants' friendship quality and empathy as indices of social competence. Participants’ friends and disliked peers were identified using sociometric nominations. Mid-adolescents (Mage = 14.6; N = 50) distributed coins between themselves and another player in a set of allocation games where they could make prosocial or selfish decisions for their friends and disliked peers, as well as for neutral and unfamiliar peers. Participants made the most prosocial decisions for friends and the least prosocial decisions for disliked peers. Prosocial decisions for friends yielded activity in the putamen and posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) when compared to prosocial decisions for disliked peers, and in the superior parietal lobule (SPL) and precentral gyrus when compared to prosocial decisions for unfamiliar peers. Selfish decisions for friends and decisions for disliked peers did not result in heightened neural activity. Exploratory analyses of the associations between these neural activation patterns and measures of social competence revealed that putamen activity related negatively to negative friendship quality and that empathic personal distress related positively to SPL and precentral gyrus activity. Together, the findings illustrated that the SPL, precentral gyrus, pMTG, and putamen may be involved in promoting the continuation of friendships, and that social competence may modulate these neural mechanisms.

SHARING IS BEAUTIFUL: AN APPLICATION OF ULTIMATUM GAME

Economics is a science which is based on decisions of individuals who aims to satisfy their needs. Economic theory which is originated from west is developed by assuming that human makes rational and selfish decisions. Homo economicus individual does not share and interest in only his/her benefits. Ultimatum game is usually used in analysing decision mechanisms of human. This game shows that individual whether prefers selfish choices or fair choices. Researches show that individuals prefer fair alternatives. The aim of this research is to determine preferences of individuals in Turkish society. To this aim we conducted an experiment in students of Kastamonu University Economics and Administrative Sciences. As a result of this research, it is found that individuals are more willing to share and do not act rationally when they think that distribution is not fair.

An experiment investigating the spillover effects of communication opportunities

We report on an experiment designed to explore whether the effects of expressing one’s emotions spill over into future interactions, thereby curtailing subsequent selfish decisions. In between two identical public goods games, participants play a binary-choice dictator game which, depending on the treatment, either gives or does not give the recipient the opportunity to text the dictator. The recipients of an unfair offer—in contrast to the recipients of a fair offer—contribute significantly less in the second public goods game. Yet, their contribution reductions are significantly smaller in the treatment allowing for recipient communication. To control for a belief-based explanation of these findings, we run treatments where we elicit beliefs about the other’s contribution. We find that belief elicitation affects the efficacy of communication.