Recent research

Loss avoidance can increase and decrease cooperation

Decisions in social dilemmas lead to outcomes for oneself and others. These outcomes can be gains or losses, yet we lack a full understanding of how people’s decisions depend on which outcomes are above or below zero. We systematically varied whether the outcomes of social dilemmas (Prisoner’s Dilemma, Stag-Hunt, Chicken) were losses, gains, or combinations thereof. Across 7 experiments (4 preregistered; N Offline = 197, N Online = 1,653), participants consistently tried to avoid losses altogether (loss avoidance), but they did not try to minimise losses (loss aversion). If cooperation avoided losses, people cooperated more, if defection avoided losses, people defected more, even if this imposed a loss on someone else. Loss avoidance was larger for one-shot than for iterated games and was present in all games studied. Our results suggest that loss avoidance, rather than loss aversion, systematically influences how people cooperate.

Linearly-additive decomposed 2x2 games: a primer for research

(Read paper at Collabra: Psychology)

2x2 games (such as the Prisoner's Dilemma) are economic games for studying cooperation and social decision-making. Linearly-additive decomposed games are variants of 2x2 games that can change the framing of the game and thereby provide researchers with additional flexibility for measuring preferences and social cognition that would not be possible with standard (matrix-form) 2x2 games. In this paper, we provide a systematic overview of linearly-additive decomposed 2x2 games. We show which 2x2 games can be decomposed in a linearly-additive way and how to calculate possible decompositions for a given game. We close by suggesting for which experiments decomposed games might be more conducive than matrix games.

Social preferences and psychopathy in a sample of male prisoners - a pilot study

(Read paper at Scientific Reports)

Social decisions are influenced by a person’s social preferences. High psychopathy is defined by antisocial behaviour, but the relationship between psychopathy and social preferences remains unclear. In this study, we used a battery of economic games to study social decision-making and social preferences in relation to psychopathy in a sample of 35 male prison inmates, who were arrested for sexual and severe violent offenses (mean age = 39 years). We found no evidence for a relationship between social preferences (measured with the Dictator and Ultimatum Games, Social Value Orientation, and one-shot 2 × 2 games) and psychopathy (measured by the overall Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised score and both factors). These results are surprising but also difficult to interpret due to the small sample size. Our results contribute to the ongoing debate about psychopathy and social decision-making by providing crucial data that can be combined with future datasets to reach large sample sizes that can provide a more nuanced understanding about the relationship between psychopathy and social preferences.