46,171 research outputs found
From Social Simulation to Integrative System Design
As the recent financial crisis showed, today there is a strong need to gain
"ecological perspective" of all relevant interactions in
socio-economic-techno-environmental systems. For this, we suggested to set-up a
network of Centers for integrative systems design, which shall be able to run
all potentially relevant scenarios, identify causality chains, explore feedback
and cascading effects for a number of model variants, and determine the
reliability of their implications (given the validity of the underlying
models). They will be able to detect possible negative side effect of policy
decisions, before they occur. The Centers belonging to this network of
Integrative Systems Design Centers would be focused on a particular field, but
they would be part of an attempt to eventually cover all relevant areas of
society and economy and integrate them within a "Living Earth Simulator". The
results of all research activities of such Centers would be turned into
informative input for political Decision Arenas. For example, Crisis
Observatories (for financial instabilities, shortages of resources,
environmental change, conflict, spreading of diseases, etc.) would be connected
with such Decision Arenas for the purpose of visualization, in order to make
complex interdependencies understandable to scientists, decision-makers, and
the general public.Comment: 34 pages, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c
Predicting Human Cooperation
The Prisoner's Dilemma has been a subject of extensive research due to its
importance in understanding the ever-present tension between individual
self-interest and social benefit. A strictly dominant strategy in a Prisoner's
Dilemma (defection), when played by both players, is mutually harmful.
Repetition of the Prisoner's Dilemma can give rise to cooperation as an
equilibrium, but defection is as well, and this ambiguity is difficult to
resolve. The numerous behavioral experiments investigating the Prisoner's
Dilemma highlight that players often cooperate, but the level of cooperation
varies significantly with the specifics of the experimental predicament. We
present the first computational model of human behavior in repeated Prisoner's
Dilemma games that unifies the diversity of experimental observations in a
systematic and quantitatively reliable manner. Our model relies on data we
integrated from many experiments, comprising 168,386 individual decisions. The
computational model is composed of two pieces: the first predicts the
first-period action using solely the structural game parameters, while the
second predicts dynamic actions using both game parameters and history of play.
Our model is extremely successful not merely at fitting the data, but in
predicting behavior at multiple scales in experimental designs not used for
calibration, using only information about the game structure. We demonstrate
the power of our approach through a simulation analysis revealing how to best
promote human cooperation.Comment: Added references. New inline citation style. Added small portions of
text. Re-compiled Rmarkdown file with updated ggplot2 so small aesthetic
changes to plot
Cooperation and Contagion in Web-Based, Networked Public Goods Experiments
A longstanding idea in the literature on human cooperation is that
cooperation should be reinforced when conditional cooperators are more likely
to interact. In the context of social networks, this idea implies that
cooperation should fare better in highly clustered networks such as cliques
than in networks with low clustering such as random networks. To test this
hypothesis, we conducted a series of web-based experiments, in which 24
individuals played a local public goods game arranged on one of five network
topologies that varied between disconnected cliques and a random regular graph.
In contrast with previous theoretical work, we found that network topology had
no significant effect on average contributions. This result implies either that
individuals are not conditional cooperators, or else that cooperation does not
benefit from positive reinforcement between connected neighbors. We then tested
both of these possibilities in two subsequent series of experiments in which
artificial seed players were introduced, making either full or zero
contributions. First, we found that although players did generally behave like
conditional cooperators, they were as likely to decrease their contributions in
response to low contributing neighbors as they were to increase their
contributions in response to high contributing neighbors. Second, we found that
positive effects of cooperation were contagious only to direct neighbors in the
network. In total we report on 113 human subjects experiments, highlighting the
speed, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of web-based experiments over those
conducted in physical labs
Exploration of location-based services adoption
As mobile technologies become more ubiquitous in the general population, it is reasonable to assume that individuals will consume services and software to enhance their aspirations and entertainment desires. This paper discusses a controlled experiment to explore aspects of user perceptions of their use of location-based services. This study examines a location-based service prototype experiment and analysis based on the UTAUT model. The results show significant indicators that suggest behavior patterns of early adopters of location-based services are being observed. We discuss these influences and attempt to explain their significance. Moreover, more curiously we discuss why some of our model was unsupported and postulate why
A Cognitive-based scheme for user reliability and expertise assessment in Q&A social networks
Q&A social media has gained a great deal of attention during recent years. People rely on these sites to obtain information due to the number of advantages they offer as compared to conventional sources of knowledge (e.g., asynchronous and convenient access). However, for the same question one may find highly contradictory answers, causing ambiguity with respect to the correct information. This can be attributed to the presence of unreliable and/or non-expert users. In this work, we propose a novel approach for estimating the reliability and expertise of a user based on human cognitive traits. Every user can individually estimate these values based on local pairwise interactions. We examine the convergence performance of our algorithm and we find that it can accurately assess the reliability and the expertise of a user and can successfully react to the latter's behavior change. © 2011 IEEE
Feedback type as a moderator of the relationship between achievement goals and feedback reactions
The aim of the current study is to shed new light on the inconsistent relationship between performance-approach (PAp) goals and feedback reactions by examining feedback type as a moderator. Results of a field experiment (N = 939) using a web-based work simulation task showed that the effect of achievement-approach goals was moderated by feedback type. Relative to individuals pursuing mastery-approach goals, individuals pursuing PAp goals responded more negatively to comparative feedback but not to task-referenced feedback. In line with the hypothesized mediated moderation model, the interaction between achievement goals and feedback type also indirectly affected task performance through feedback reactions. Providing employees with feedback is a key psychological principle used in a wide range of human resource and performance management instruments (e.g., developmental assessment centres, multi-source/360 degrees feedback, training, selection, performance appraisal, management education, computer-adaptive testing, and coaching). The current study suggests that organizations need to strike a balance between encouraging learning and encouraging performance, as too much emphasis on comparative performance (both in goal inducement and in feedback style) may be detrimental to employees' reactions and rate of performance improvement
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