Beyond a binary theorizing of prosociality

Chen Shen, Zhixue He, Hao Guo, Shuyue Hu, Jun Tanimoto, Lei Shi () and Petter Holme ()
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Chen Shen: a Faculty of Engineering Sciences , Kyushu University , Fukuoka 816-8580 , Japan
Zhixue He: c Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Engineering Sciences , Kyushu University , Fukuoka 816-8580 , Japan
Hao Guo: d Department of Computer Science and Technology , Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084 , China
Shuyue Hu: e Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , Shanghai 200232 , China
Jun Tanimoto: c Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Engineering Sciences , Kyushu University , Fukuoka 816-8580 , Japan
Lei Shi: b School of Statistics and Mathematics , Yunnan University of Finance and Economics , Kunming 650221 , China
Petter Holme: g Center for Computational Social Science , Kobe University , Kobe 650-0017 , Japan

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024, vol. 121, issue 49, e2412195121

Abstract:

Stylized experiments, the public goods game and its variants thereof, have taught us the peculiar reproducible fact that humans tend to cooperate (or contribute to shared resources) more than expected from economically rational assumptions. There have been two competing explanations for this phenomenon: Either cooperating is an innate human trait (the prosocial preference hypothesis) or a transitory effect while learning the game (the confused learner hypothesis). We use large-scale experimental data in the two-player version of the public goods game—the prisoner’s dilemma—from an experimental design to distinguish between these two hypotheses. By monitoring the effects of zealots (persistently cooperating bots) and varying the participants’ awareness of them, we find a considerably more complex scenario than previously reported. People indeed have a prosocial bias, but not to the degree that they always forego taking action to increase their profit. While our findings end the simplistic theorizing of prosociality, an observed positive, cooperative response to zealots has actionable policy implications.

Keywords: prosociality; cooperation; social dilemmas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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