Biased cost and benefit estimations facilitate the effectiveness of cooperative costly signals in humans
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In this study, we investigate whether perceptual biases facilitate the effectiveness of cooperative costly signals in humans. Specifically, we propose that biased cost and benefit estimations of cooperative signals are used by automatic cognitive processes to determine the value of costly signals. The intuitive processes create a parameter space in which uncommitted people perceive the signal costs to be larger than, discouraging them from signaling and then taking advantage of the group effort. To test this, we first measure participants’ cooperative strategies and then offer them to play Public Goods Game (PGG) in a group either with or without a costly signal. The costly signal is an extra effort – transcribing a useless text. We manipulate the text length (1.5 min vs 10 min transcription) to manipulate signal costliness. Before selecting whether to signal or not, participants are asked about their perceptions of the signal cost and benefits and afterwards play PGG in the chosen group (with costly signal vs no signal). The main hypothesis states that participants with cooperative strategies will report A) larger benefits and B) smaller costs of the signaling group than individualistic strategies participants. This difference will be larger in the high cost condition. In a pilot study (n = 70), we found that participants with individualistic strategies were less likely to choose a costly signal in the high-cost condition and were more likely to perceive the signal as more costly in the high-cost condition. Furthermore, the low-cost signal was perceived as less beneficial than the high-cost signal. Certainly, all these effects are unreliably estimated due to a low number of participants but are in the predicted directions. We are currently collecting data (n = 400) and will also conduct a follow-up study with religious/secular participants and religious signals. Both studies will be presented at the conference. |
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