The Evolution of Social Contracts

Influential thinkers such as Young, Sugden, Binmore, and Skyrms have developed game-theoretic accounts of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. Social contracts are sets of commonly understood rules that govern cooperative social interaction within societies. These naturalistic accounts provide us with valuable and important insights into the foundations of human societies. However, current naturalistic theories focus mainly on how social contracts solve coordination problems in which the interests of the individual participants are aligned, not competition problems in which individual interests compete with group interests. In response, I set out to build on those theories and provide a comprehensive naturalistic account of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. My central claim is that social contracts have culturally evolved to solve cooperation problems, which include both coordination and competition problems. I argue that solutions to coordination problems emerge from “within-group” dynamics, while solutions to competition problems result largely from “between-group” dynamics

Towards global cooperation: The case for a Deliberative Global Citizens' assembly

In an important article published in this journal, Dryzek, Bächtiger and Milewicz (2011) champion the convocation of a Deliberative Global Citizens’ Assembly (DGCA). In this article, I aim to further strengthen the case for a DGCA by addressing: (i) why a DGCA is likely to take a long-term perspective in the global interest and (ii) why it is so vital that a global institution should do so. I start by analyzing the nature of the issues requiring global policy. These issues, I will argue, are typically global cooperation problems. Cooperation problems pose two major challenges. The first is to prevent freeriding – i.e. serving one’s short-term interests at the expense of the long-term global interest. The second is to align on an efficient global policy. In both respects, I will argue, a DGCA is a good candidate to yield desirable results (and is likely to do better than current supranational institutions)

the cultural evolution of institutional religions

In recent work, Atran, Henrich, Norenzayan and colleagues developed an account of religion that reconciles insights from the ‘by-product’ accounts and the adaptive accounts. According to their synthesis, the process of cultural group selection driven by group competition has recruited our proclivity to adopt and spread religious beliefs and engage in religious practices to increase within group solidarity, harmony and cooperation. While their account has much merit, I believe it only tells us half the story of how institutional religions have evolved. Their cultural evolutionary account of religion only looks at the cultural dynamics arising from competition between groups, not at the dynamics arising from within the group. Drawing from game-theoretic analyses of the emergence and cultural evolution of social institutions, I outline two sets of important ‘within-group’ dynamics that shape institutional religions. The first follow from the necessity to keep the interaction of the participants in an equilibrium state in order to maintain the social institution. The second arise from the competition of institutional features for traction within the group. Bringing these dynamics into account enables us to explain prominent features of institutional religions that cannot be satisfactorily explained by the current model of the cultural evolution of religions

Don’t blame the norms! On the challenges of ecological rationality

Enlightenment thinkers viewed logic and mathematical probability as the hallmarks of rationality. In psychological research on human (ir)rationality, human subjects are typically held accountable to this arcane ideal of Reason. If people fall short of these traditional standards, as indeed they often do, they are biased or irrational. Recent work in the program of ecological rationality, however, aims to rehabilitate human reason, and to upturn our traditional conception of rationality in the process. Put bluntly, these researchers are turning the tables on the traditionalist, showing that human reasoning often outperforms complex algorithms based on the traditional canons of rationality. If human reason still appears paltry from the vantage point of capital-R Rationality, then so much the worse for Rationality. Maybe the norms themselves are in need of revision. Perhaps human reasoning is better than rational. Though we welcome the naturalization of human reason, we argue that this backlash against the classical norms of rationality is uncalled for. Ecological rationality presents two apparent challenges to the traditional canons of rationality. In both cases, we contend, the norms emerge unscathed. In the first category, norms of rationality that appear violated by individual reasoners, re-emerge at the level of evolutionary adaptation. In the second category, the norms under challenge simply turn out to be not applicable to the case at hand. Moreover, we should keep in mind that, when they are assessing the efficiency of human reasoning, advocates of ecological rationality still use the traditional norms of rationality as a benchmark. We conclude that, even if we accept all the fascinating findings garnered by the advocates of ecological rationality (and there is ample reason to do so), we need not be taken in by the rhetoric against classical rationality, or the false opposition between logical and ecological rationality. When the dust has settled, the norms are still standing

Employee acceptability of wearable mental workload monitoring in industry 4.0 : a pilot study on motivational and contextual framing

As Industry 4.0 will greatly challenge employee mental workload (MWL), research on objective wearable MWL-monitoring is in high demand. However, numerous research lines validating such technology might become redundant when employees eventually object to its implementation. In a pilot study, we manipulated two ways in which employees might perceive MWL-monitoring initiatives. We found that framing the technology in terms of serving intrinsic goals (e.g., improving health) together with an autonomy-supportive context (e.g., allowing discussion) yields higher user acceptability when compared to framing in terms of extrinsic goals (e.g., increasing productivity) together with a controlling context (e.g., mandating use). User acceptability still panned out neutral in case of the former, however - feeding into our own and suggested future work

Psychosocial predictors of actual turnover among Belgian health care workers

Background: Turnover of nursing staff is a major challenge for healthcare settings and for healthcare in general, urging the need to improve retention. Aim: The aim was to explore the prospective relations between personal and psychosocial work-related factors and actual turnover among Belgian healthcare workers. Methods: Predictors of actual turnover were assessed using the longitudinal Belgian data from the Nurses Early Exit Study (NEXT). Two self-administered questionnaires with a time lag of one year were distributed, covering physical and psychosocial work-related factors, private life, turnover intentions and future perspectives. During follow-up, 90 employees who left the organization voluntary (leavers) and who had a complete data set were identified. These subjects were each matched with two stayers based on gender, age and organization type. Multiple logistic analyses were performed. Results: The first model adjusting for education level showed that quantitative job demands, job satisfaction, burnout, work-home interference, commitment to the institution, pay satisfaction, effort-reward imbalance and intent to leave the organization were significantly associated with actual turnover. When additionally adjusting for intent to leave the organization, job satisfaction (OR 0.29; 95% CI 0.13-0.62) and work-home interference (OR 1.35; 95% CI 1.00-1.81) were found to be the most important independent predictors of turnover. Conclusion: To tackle turnover, special attention should be given to turnover intention, work-home interference and job satisfaction because these risk factors were found to be the strongest predictors of actual turnover among nurses and nursing aids