Burton-Chellew et al. 2016 PNAS : conditional cooperation and confusion in public-goods experiments

Experimental data reported in Burton-Chellew et al. 2016 PNAS Conditional cooperation and confusion in public-goods experiments Economic experiments are often used to study if humans altruistically value the welfare of others. A canonical result from public-good games is that humans vary in how they...

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Yazar: Burton-Chellew, M
Materyal Türü: Dataset
Dil:English
Baskı/Yayın Bilgisi: University of Oxford 2016
Konular:
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author Burton-Chellew, M
author2 Burton-Chellew, M
author_facet Burton-Chellew, M
Burton-Chellew, M
author_sort Burton-Chellew, M
collection OXFORD
description Experimental data reported in Burton-Chellew et al. 2016 PNAS Conditional cooperation and confusion in public-goods experiments Economic experiments are often used to study if humans altruistically value the welfare of others. A canonical result from public-good games is that humans vary in how they value the welfare of others, dividing into fair-minded conditional cooperators, who match the cooperation of others, and selfish noncooperators. However, an alternative explanation for the data are that individuals vary in their understanding of how to maximize income, with misunderstanding leading to the appearance of cooperation. We show that (i) individuals divide into the same behavioral types when playing with computers, whom they cannot be concerned with the welfare of; (ii) behavior across games with computers and humans is correlated and can be explained by variation in understanding of how to maximize income; (iii) misunderstanding correlates with higher levels of cooperation; and (iv) standard control questions do not guarantee understanding. These results cast doubt on certain experimental methods and demonstrate that a common assumption in behavioral economics experiments, that choices reveal motivations, will not necessarily hold.
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spelling oxford-uuid:10318b9e-1ff1-4034-a459-6c953452a0a12022-03-26T09:55:13ZBurton-Chellew et al. 2016 PNAS : conditional cooperation and confusion in public-goods experimentsDatasethttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_ddb1uuid:10318b9e-1ff1-4034-a459-6c953452a0a1Economics--Psychological aspectsSocial evolutionEnglishORA DepositUniversity of Oxford2016Burton-Chellew, MBurton-Chellew, MWest, SMouden, CExperimental data reported in Burton-Chellew et al. 2016 PNAS Conditional cooperation and confusion in public-goods experiments Economic experiments are often used to study if humans altruistically value the welfare of others. A canonical result from public-good games is that humans vary in how they value the welfare of others, dividing into fair-minded conditional cooperators, who match the cooperation of others, and selfish noncooperators. However, an alternative explanation for the data are that individuals vary in their understanding of how to maximize income, with misunderstanding leading to the appearance of cooperation. We show that (i) individuals divide into the same behavioral types when playing with computers, whom they cannot be concerned with the welfare of; (ii) behavior across games with computers and humans is correlated and can be explained by variation in understanding of how to maximize income; (iii) misunderstanding correlates with higher levels of cooperation; and (iv) standard control questions do not guarantee understanding. These results cast doubt on certain experimental methods and demonstrate that a common assumption in behavioral economics experiments, that choices reveal motivations, will not necessarily hold.
spellingShingle Economics--Psychological aspects
Social evolution
Burton-Chellew, M
Burton-Chellew et al. 2016 PNAS : conditional cooperation and confusion in public-goods experiments
title Burton-Chellew et al. 2016 PNAS : conditional cooperation and confusion in public-goods experiments
title_full Burton-Chellew et al. 2016 PNAS : conditional cooperation and confusion in public-goods experiments
title_fullStr Burton-Chellew et al. 2016 PNAS : conditional cooperation and confusion in public-goods experiments
title_full_unstemmed Burton-Chellew et al. 2016 PNAS : conditional cooperation and confusion in public-goods experiments
title_short Burton-Chellew et al. 2016 PNAS : conditional cooperation and confusion in public-goods experiments
title_sort burton chellew et al 2016 pnas conditional cooperation and confusion in public goods experiments
topic Economics--Psychological aspects
Social evolution
work_keys_str_mv AT burtonchellewm burtonchellewetal2016pnasconditionalcooperationandconfusioninpublicgoodsexperiments