Collaborative Research: Understanding Strategic Economic Interactions in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans

合作研究：了解猴子、类人猿和人类的战略经济相互作用

• 批准号: 0729255
• 负责人: Bart Wilson
• 金额: $ 16.91万
• 依托单位: George Mason University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-10-01 至 2008-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0729255&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Understanding; Strategic; Economic

Economic decision making has guided human behavior for thousands of years, but little is known about the evolution and adaptiveness of such decision making in humans. Monkeys and apes provide a good model for many human behaviors due to their close evolutionary relatedness and similar cognitive abilities. This project examines the hypothesis that nonhuman primates and humans share basic economic decision making strategies that take into account partner identity and potential rewards for cooperation and defection, as well as examining how responses to computerized interactions differ from responses to face-to-face interactions in potentially cooperative situations. A common assumption is that economic decisions rely on verbal skills, and thus are perhaps unique to verbal organisms. However, economic decision making may be more phylogentically widespread than this assumption suggests in which case such behavior may be better understood by comparing the behavior of humans with the behavior of nonhuman primate species. This study uses a well known economic decision making game called the Assurance, or Stag Hunt game. After being paired with a partner, individuals must choose between a cooperative outcome which is beneficial to both players and a non-cooperative outcome in which the partner does not receive any reward and the player receives some reward. Both individuals are better off if they cooperate; however, if a player is concerned that the partner may not cooperate, then that player is better off 'defecting', or choosing the non-cooperative option. In some situations, participants will experience face-to-face interactions with the partner, whereas in other situations the notion of ?social distance? will be introduced by having participants play computerized versions of the game. Many cooperative interactions do not pay all participants equally, and this may have a major impact on subsequent cooperation and defection. Thus, some conditions in this study will determine how responses to economic games are altered when one player receives either more rewards for cooperating (leading to unequal payoff and motivation for their partner to defect) or more rewards for defecting (leading to motivation to defect). Human and nonhuman subjects will serve as subjects in all treatments and their behavior will be compared. These data will clarify how individuals make cooperative decisions, and how such decisions are affected by face-to-face interaction and inequity. Understanding these interactions in both nonhuman primate and humans will help to more properly place nonhuman behavior in context with human behavior and to understand the roots from which human economic decision making emerged.

几千年来，经济决策一直指导着人类的行为，但人们对这种决策在人类中的进化和适应性知之甚少。由于猴子和猿类在进化上的密切联系和相似的认知能力，它们为许多人类行为提供了一个很好的模型。这个项目考察了这样一种假设，即非人类灵长类动物和人类共享基本的经济决策策略，这些策略考虑了伴侣的身份以及合作和叛逃的潜在回报，并研究了在潜在合作的情况下，对计算机化互动的反应与对面对面互动的反应有何不同。一种常见的假设是，经济决策依赖于语言技能，因此可能是语言有机体独有的。然而，经济决策可能比这一假设所暗示的更普遍，在这种情况下，通过将人类的行为与非人类灵长类物种的行为进行比较，可以更好地理解这种行为。这项研究使用了一种著名的经济决策游戏，称为保证游戏，或Stag Hunt游戏。在与伙伴配对后，个人必须在对双方都有利的合作结果和非合作结果之间做出选择，在非合作结果中，伙伴不会收到任何奖励，而玩家会得到一些奖励。如果双方合作，双方都会过得更好；然而，如果玩家担心对方可能不合作，那么该玩家更好的做法是‘叛逃’，或者选择不合作的选项。在某些情况下，参与者将与伴侣进行面对面的互动，而在其他情况下，社交距离的概念？将通过让参与者玩计算机版本的游戏来介绍。许多合作互动并不是平等地向所有参与者支付报酬，这可能会对随后的合作和叛逃产生重大影响。因此，这项研究中的一些条件将决定当一个玩家因合作而获得更多奖励(导致不相等的回报和其伴侣叛逃的动机)或因叛逃而获得更多奖励(导致叛逃动机)时，对经济博弈的反应将如何改变。人类和非人类受试者将在所有治疗中作为受试者，并将他们的行为进行比较。这些数据将阐明个人如何做出合作决策，以及这种决策如何受到面对面的互动和不平等的影响。了解非人类灵长类动物和人类之间的这些相互作用，将有助于更恰当地将非人类行为与人类行为放在一起，并理解人类经济决策产生的根源。