The restart effect in social dilemmas shows humans are self-interested not altruistic.

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License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Serval ID
serval:BIB_432117015FF3
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
The restart effect in social dilemmas shows humans are self-interested not altruistic.
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Author(s)
Burton-Chellew M.N.
ISSN
1091-6490 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
0027-8424
Publication state
Published
Issued date
06/12/2022
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
119
Number
49
Pages
e2210082119
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Journal Article ; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Publication Status: ppublish
Abstract
Do economic games show evidence of altruistic or self-interested motivations in humans? A huge body of empirical work has found contrasting results. While many participants routinely make costly decisions that benefit strangers, consistent with the hypothesis that humans exhibit a biologically novel form of altruism (or "prosociality"), many participants also typically learn to pay fewer costs with experience, consistent with self-interested individuals adapting to an unfamiliar environment. Key to resolving this debate is explaining the famous "restart effect," a puzzling enigma whereby failing cooperation in public goods games can be briefly rescued by a surprise restart. Here we replicate this canonical result, often taken as evidence of uniquely human altruism, and show that it 1) disappears when cooperation is invisible, meaning individuals can no longer affect the behavior of their groupmates, consistent with strategically motivated, self-interested, cooperation; and 2) still occurs even when individuals are knowingly grouped with computer players programmed to replicate human decisions, consistent with confusion. These results show that the restart effect can be explained by a mixture of self-interest and irrational beliefs about the game's payoffs, and not altruism. Consequently, our results suggest that public goods games have often been measuring self-interested but confused behaviors and reject the idea that conventional theories of evolution cannot explain the results of economic games.
Keywords
Humans, Altruism, Learning, Motivation, conditional cooperation, confusion, public goods game, social preferences
Pubmed
Create date
12/12/2022 12:44
Last modification date
25/01/2024 8:34
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