Sharing losses and sharing gains: Increased demand for fairness under adversity

There is ample experimental evidence showing that people have a strong preference for equity in wealth allocation and social interaction. Although the behavior of gain sharing and responses to (un)fairness in allocation of wealth has been extensively investigated in studies employing economic exchange games, few studies have focused on how people respond to an unfair division of loss between individuals. In this study we developed a new variant of the ultimatum game and examined the participants' reactions to (un)fairness in both gain and loss sharing. Results from three experiments showed that the rejection rates to unfair offers were generally higher in the loss than in the gain domain. Moreover, participants were inclined to associate loss with “unfair” and gain with “fair”, with stronger associations leading to higher rejection rates in the ultimatum game. Furthermore, in subjective rating, unfair offers were perceived as being more unfair in the loss than in the gain domain. These results demonstrate an increased demand for fairness under adversity and the importance of justice in liability sharing.     

Mutual support in games: Some properties of Berge equilibria

The Berge equilibrium concept formalizes mutual support among players motivated by the altruistic social value orientation in games. We prove some basic results for Berge equilibria and their relations to Nash equilibria, and we provide a straightforward method for finding Berge equilibria in n-player games. We explore some specific examples, and we explain how the Berge equilibrium provides a compelling model of cooperation in social dilemmas. We show that the Berge equilibrium also explains coordination in some common interest games and is partially successful in explaining the payoff dominance phenomenon, and we comment that the theory of team reasoning provides alternative solutions to these problems.     

Lex talionis: Testosterone and the law of retaliation

Research examining both the organizing and activating effects of testosterone in one-shot bargaining contexts has been vexed by inconsistencies. Some research finds that high-testosterone men are more likely to reject unfair offers in an ultimatum game and exogenous administration of testosterone to men leads to less generous offers. In contrast, other research finds that higher prenatal exposure to testosterone predicts more generous dictator game offers and administering testosterone to women leads to more generous ultimatum game offers. The current research seeks to resolve these inconsistencies by examining how the organizing effects of testosterone affect bargaining behavior. Because testosterone is associated with status seeking and concerns with social reputation, we hypothesized that testosterone would predict aggressive bargaining but only after provocation. Two studies found that prenatal testosterone exposure, as measured by 2D:4D ratio, led to aggressive responses for both males and females, but only after they received unfair offers. Furthermore, perceptions of fairness violations moderated but did not mediate the effect of testosterone on retributional responding. These results suggest that the organizing effects of testosterone have consistent effects on bargaining behavior for both males and females but its predictive ability requires some form of provocation to emerge.     

Understanding cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma game

In the standard one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma game, participants often choose to cooperate, when the optimal strategy is to defect. This puzzling finding has attracted considerable interest both in terms of possible computational frameworks for modeling human judgment, but also regarding the more general debate of human altruism. In this research, we ask how much of human behavior in this task can be explained by a putative bias for cooperative behavior and whether this, in turn, is influenced by personality. We compared performance on the standard task with performance on a matched neutral one; we manipulated the optimal strategy (defect or cooperate); and we manipulated the amount of payoff for responding optimally. Results revealed little evidence for a bias for cooperative behavior, but significant associations with the personality factors of Behavioural Activation System (BAS) Reward Responsivity and Agreeableness were found. These findings are discussed in terms of the attempt to explain judgment in one-shot, Prisoner’s Dilemma tasks with statistical or probabilistic models.     

Regional differences in brain volume predict the acquisition of skill in a complex real-time strategy videogame

Previous studies have found that differences in brain volume among older adults predict performance in laboratory tasks of executive control, memory, and motor learning. In the present study we asked whether regional differences in brain volume as assessed by the application of a voxel-based morphometry technique on high resolution MRI would also be useful in predicting the acquisition of skill in complex tasks, such as strategy-based video games. Twenty older adults were trained for over 20 h to play Rise of Nations, a complex real-time strategy game. These adults showed substantial improvements over the training period in game performance. MRI scans obtained prior to training revealed that the volume of a number of brain regions, which have been previously associated with subsets of the trained skills, predicted a substantial amount of variance in learning on the complex game. Thus, regional differences in brain volume can predict learning in complex tasks that entail the use of a variety of perceptual, cognitive and motor processes.     

基于技术接受模型的青少年网络游戏成瘾机制研究

本研究以技术接受模型(TAM)为理论框架, 通过对380名中学生的问卷调查考察了青少年网络游戏成瘾的影响因素及其机制。结果发现:(1)有用感、易用感、品质感知、游戏体验和态度与网络游戏成瘾显著正相关;(2)品质感知和游戏体验通过态度的部分中介作用对网络游戏成瘾产生间接影响, 同时对网络游戏成瘾有直接效应;有用感和易用感通过态度的完全中介作用对网络游戏成瘾产生间接影响, 对网络游戏成瘾没有直接效应。本研究结果表明, 品质感知、有用感、易用感和游戏体验对青少年网络游戏成瘾具有重要影响, 态度是其中的重要中介变量。     

医患关系的博弈分析

医患关系是医疗中最基本最重要的关系,也是最复杂的人际关系,建立良好的医患关系是保证医疗工作顺利进行的必备条件。但是这种关系从开始就是有矛盾的,在信息不对称的情况下分析医患关系的博弈情况及其原因,发现医患关系的核心是信任,它为创造和谐医患关系提出对策,并能促进构建和谐医患关系。     

人体实验失范原因分析及对策

人体实验是一种特殊的交易活动。信息不完备与不对称、交易制度监督漏洞都使卫生研究机构在交易博弈中处于优势地位。集体机会主义行为是导致违规人体实验的重要因素。对违规人体实验的宽容在一定程度上怂恿了这种行为。从健全制度、完善法治、加强教育等方面提出了对策。     

What you don’t know won’t hurt me: Costly (but quiet) exit in dictator games

We used simple economic games to examine pro-social behavior and the lengths that people will take to avoid engaging in it. Over two studies, we found that about one-third of participants were willing to “exit” a $10 dictator game and take $9 instead. The exit option left the receiver nothing, but also ensured that the receiver never knew that a dictator game was to be played. Because most social utility models are defined over monetary outcomes, they cannot explain choosing the ($9, $0) exit outcome over the dominating $10 dictator game, since the game includes outcomes of ($10, $0) and ($9, $1). We also studied exiting using a “private” dictator game. In the private game, the receiver never knew about the game or from where any money was received. Gifts in this game were added innocuously to a payment for a separate task. Almost no dictators exited from the private game, indicating that receivers’ beliefs are the key factor in the decision to exit. When, as in the private game, the receivers’ beliefs and expectations cannot be manipulated by exit, exit is seldom taken. We conclude that giving often reflects a desire not to violate others’ expectations rather than a concern for others’ welfare per se. We discuss the implications of our results for understanding ethical decisions and for testing and modeling social preferences. An adequate specification of social preferences should include “psychological” payoffs that directly incorporate beliefs about actions into the utility function.     

Radical Semantics: A New Theory of Meaning

This paper extends Parikh’s earlier work in semantics with games of partial information and attempts to derive and represent the full content of an utterance from first principles. It also discusses various ways in which this content may be indeterminate.