Interpersonal interactions in an unequal world:effects of inequality and unfairness on social and consumer decision making

The last decades have been marked by a sharp increase in inequality in several countries. The rising differences between the poor and the rich are thought to bring many negative consequences for individuals and societies. For example, inequality increases competition and working hours while decreasing cooperation and subjective well-being. Living in an unequal society can affect our thinking and our behaviour in a variety of ways. In turn, our decisions can contribute to the perpetuation of the gap between the rich and the poor. This thesis investigates how individuals perceive inequality of opportunities and inequality of income and how the unequal distribution of resources impact their decision-making. It specifically investigates how inequality affects individuals’ decisions of which products to buy, their thinking about how resources should be shared and their reactions to those who are fair or unfair to them and others

Psychological and Neural Processing of Social Risk and Discrepancy in Major Depressive Disorder

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is one of the most prevalent health conditions in the world, characterised by persistent low mood and disruption to education, relationships, and employment. Disruption to social functioning is a core feature of MDD, and this dimension of the disorder may offer valuable insight into its aetiology. This thesis aims to extend our understanding of social processing in MDD by testing hypotheses generated from a socio-evolutionary theoretical framework of MDD, with particular emphasis on the Social Risk Hypothesis of Depressed Mood, which conceptualises depressed mood as an adaptive response to elevated risk of social exclusion. The thesis pursues these aims utilising novel protocols and neuroeconomic games to examine social risk-taking and self-discrepancies, and by examining the role of regions of the physical pain network in social function and processing of unexpected social information. The thesis consists of nine chapters; one general methodology chapter (Chapter 3), five chapters detailing novel experimental studies (Chapters 4,5,6,7 and 8), one describing a reanalysis of existing data (Chapter 2), one introductory chapter and one discussion chapter (Chapters 1 and 9 respectively). Across these chapters, the thesis presents neural and behavioural evidence that MDD is associated with reduced social risk-taking, increased sensitivity to an exclusion-relevant context (in-group interactions) and stronger enforcement of social norms. The thesis presents neural evidence of a negative processing bias for self-discrepancies in MDD, linked to activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula, and suggesting a role for perfectionism as a transdiagnostic sensitivity to such discrepancies. Suggestions for future research are discussed, including increased utilisation of neuroeconomic games, particularly in relation to assessing social function as a transdiagnostic marker. Overall, the thesis provides support for socio-evolutionary frameworks of affect, and highlights their unique perspective for understanding affective disorders, with some ‘deficits’ usefully reconceptualised as adaptive mechanisms

Social preferences across contexts

Over the past decades, the behavior of people who do not maximize their payoff but instead seem to be other-regarding has received much attention in the (behavioral) economics literature. Many different social preference models that ideally explain such other-regarding behavior across a large span of contexts have been proposed and tested. Building on this literature, this dissertation studies social preferences in different contexts and expressions across three manuscripts. The first manuscript examines the behavior of people who avoid a situation that allows them to express social preferences. Drawing on psychological game theory, we tested whether guilt-aversion or self-image concerns could better explain this behavior. It was found that guilt-aversion, but not self-image concerns, can explain the behavior of these people. The second manuscript made use of crowdfunding donations data and showed that the reversal of the compassion fade effect when going from a separate to a joint evaluation condition extends from the lab to the field. Social preferences can also manifest themselves through people donating their time. The third manuscript examines how the severity of a catastrophe (i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic) affects the provision of catastrophe-related voluntary labor. We found a concave relationship between the weekly COVID-19-related death numbers and the amount of voluntary work provided by individuals. Thus, by drawing on prosocial behavior expressed in three different environments, this dissertation extends the current literature by studying how social preferences are influenced by the context in which they are carried out

Decisions, decisions, decisions: the development and plasticity of reinforcement learning, social and temporal decision making in children

Human decision-making is the flexible way people respond to their environment, take actions, and plan toward long-term goals. It is commonly thought that humans rely on distinct decision-making systems, which are either more habitual and reflexive or deliberate and calculated. How we make decisions can provide insight into our social functioning, mental health and underlying psychopathology, and ability to consider the consequences of our actions. Notably, the ability to make appropriate, habitual or deliberate decisions depending on the context, here referred to as metacontrol, remains underexplored in developmental samples. This thesis aims to investigate the development of different decision-making mechanisms in middle childhood (ages 5-13) and to illuminate the potential neurocognitive mechanisms underlying value-based decision-making. Using a novel sequential decision-making task, the first experimental chapter presents robust markers of model-based decision-making in childhood (N = 85), which reflects the ability to plan through a sequential task structure, contrary to previous developmental studies. Using the same paradigm, in a new sample via both behavioral (N = 69) and MRI-based measures (N = 44), the second experimental chapter explores the neurocognitive mechanisms that may underlie model-based decision-making and its metacontrol in childhood and links individual differences in inhibition and cortical thickness to metacontrol. The third experimental chapter explores the potential plasticity of social and intertemporal decision-making in a longitudinal executive function training paradigm (N = 205) and initial relationships with executive functions. Finally, I critically discuss the results presented in this thesis and their implications and outline directions for future research in the neurocognitive underpinnings of decision-making during development

Dissecting Discrimination

This Open-Access-book examines the phenomenon of discrimination using a descriptive approach. Discrimination is omnipresent, whether it is people who discriminate against other people or, more recently, also machines that discriminate against people. The first part of the analysis employs decision theory on discrimination, leading to two fundamental subtypes: taste-based discrimination and statistical discrimination. The second part links taste-based discrimination to social identity theory, demonstrates that not all taste-based discrimination is ultimately statistical discrimination, and reveals the evolutionary origins of our tastes. The third part surveys how people get their beliefs for statistical discrimination and thereby shows that they often deviate from Bayesianism: they have inherent prior beliefs and do not exclusively update their beliefs according to Bayes’ law. Additionally, the analysis of belief formation highlights the importance of the learning environment. The last part reassembles the previously dissected aspects of discrimination, presents a new descriptive model of discrimination, and lists five implications for a normative theory of discrimination

The effect of extrinsic and intrinsic factors on cooperation in social conflict situations: the case of the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game

Cooperation in our ever changing and growing societies is vital. However, conflict cannot be avoided when it comes to change and growth. I used the repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma Game to investigate the impact of extrinsic and intrinsic factors on cooperation in conflict. Four behavioural studies were conducted with 282 participants, playing the game within different social and environmental contexts. Findings from these studies suggest that cooperation in PDG depends on the extrinsic variables of social and environmental contexts, the intrinsic variables of individual differences, and the history of recent interactions. In the fifth study, I ran a meta-analysis using Linear Mixed Effect analysis to examine the effect of each of the above factors across the studies accounting for both mixed and random effects. Finding from the meta-analysis highlights strong dependency of cooperation on participants previous choices, the social and the environmental contexts and gender. Importantly, the environmental context and age and the partner’s behaviour and attachment style showed to interactively affect cooperation in the repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. Across all studies, cooperation shown to be a function of most recent interactions, social and environmental factors, and individuals dispositions. Therefore, when studying cooperation in conflict, studying one or two variables in isolation without considering the full dynamic of the situation is an incomplete investigation

Altruistically Inclined?: The Behavioral Sciences, Evolutionary Theory, and the Origins of Reciprocity

Altruistically Inclined? examines the implications of recent research in the natural sciences for two important social scientific approaches to individual behavior: the economic/rational choice approach and the sociological/anthropological. It considers jointly two controversial and related ideas: the operation of group selection within early human evolutionary processes and the likelihood of modularity—domain-specific adaptations in our cognitive mechanisms and behavioral predispositions. Experimental research shows that people will often cooperate in one-shot prisoner\u27s dilemma (PD) games and reject positive offers in ultimatum games, contradicting commonly accepted notions of rationality. Upon first appearance, predispositions to behave in this fashion could not have been favored by natural selection operating only at the level of the individual organism. Emphasizing universal and variable features of human culture, developing research on how the brain functions, and refinements of thinking about levels of selection in evolutionary processes, Alexander J. Field argues that humans are born with the rudiments of a PD solution module—and differentially prepared to learn norms supportive of it. His emphasis on failure to harm, as opposed to the provision of affirmative assistance, as the empirically dominant form of altruistic behavior is also novel. The point of departure and principal point of reference is economics. But Altruistically Inclined? will interest a broad range of scholars in the social and behavioral sciences, natural scientists concerned with the implications of research and debates within their fields for the conduct of work elsewhere, and educated lay readers curious about essential features of human nature.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1325/thumbnail.jp

Modelling emotions and simulating their effects on social interactions in agent systems

Agent-based decision-making usually relies upon game theoretic principles that are ``rational'' i.e. decision-making is purely mathematical based on utilities such as the wealth of an agent. In the context of public goods games, such reasoning can often lead to non-optimal, destructive outcomes for both individuals and the total system, as shown in many scenarios from game theory. This thesis considers how the use of \textit{emotions} can impact upon decision-making and social interactions amongst agents in the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game by modelling emotions in a functional manner. The background to the thesis is first presented in chapters 2 and 3 where the argument for emotions being included in agent-based decision-making, and evidence to support this proposition, is outlined. Various philosophical issues are also considered such as: do emotions directly motivate an agent's intentional behaviour and, is an agent's decision-making still rational if emotions are used? The framework developed to allow for modelling of emotions in agents is then discussed in chapters 4 and 5 where major psychological models of emotion and computational implementations thereof are discussed. Finally chapters 6 to 8 present extensive investigations into how the emotions modelled using the framework affect social interactions amongst agents in the context described above. As of yet, this topic has been relatively unexplored by computer science and there is space for novel, interesting contributions to be made, these contributions are outlined below. In chapter 6 the emotions of \textit{anger} and \textit{gratitude} are modelled and their effects upon social interactions are analysed. In particular, I look at whether agents endowed with these emotions offer any improvement upon the success of agents using with the ``tit-for-tat'' strategy when playing against other leading strategies from Axelrod's famous computer tournament. How these emotions affect rates of cooperation/defection and the fairness of individual scores is considered along with why they do so. This investigation is furthered in chapter 7 where \textit{admiration} is modelled and an investigation is performed into what emotional characters are selected for under different initial conditions and why. This examination provides a discussion regarding what emotional social norms emerge in a population when agents admire the individual success of others. Two salient questions are asked: is it is the case that emotional characters which promote the total wealth of the system are selected for as an emergent property and, do different initial conditions affect the emotional characteristics selected for?. Finally, chapter 8 extends chapter 7 by modelling \textit{hope} and enquires as to how particular emotional character populations (after a complete social norm has been established) deal with destabilisation of cooperation cycles due to periodic defection. The performance of agents endowed with differing emotional characters are again tested under different initial conditions and specific behavioural features of particular emotional characters are considered. In doing this I comment upon how different emotional characters deal with periodic defection and what the best approach is both in context of an agent's individual score and the total score of the system