Collaborative Research: NSCC/SA: Behavioral Insights into National Security Issues

合作研究：NSCC/SA：国家安全问题的行为洞察

• 批准号: 1356145
• 负责人: Catherine Eckel
• 金额: $ 15.87万
• 依托单位: Texas A&M University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-05-24 至 2015-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1356145&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; NSCC; SA; Behavioral

This award was funded through the Social and Behavioral Dimensions of National Security, Conflict, and Cooperation competition, a joint venture between NSF and the Department of Defense. In the wake of recent terrorist activities, a number of game theoretic models have been developed around terrorism, counterterrorism, prevention and security. However, very few of these theories have been tested for behavioral accuracy, either in the field or in the wind-tunnel environment of the experimental laboratory. This study uses the methodology of experimental economics to test three types of theories that capture key features of security decisions. The first set of experiments investigates attack and defense games, where two players allocate limited resources over a fixed set of targets, and the side with the most resources on a target wins it. The second set tests theories of cooperation among countries in the decision whether to pursue terrorist organizations, protect their own territory, or do nothing, a situation that has been modeled as a nested prisoner's dilemma game. Through the experiments the investigators will examine how these games are played and explore institutions (such as trade sanctions or cost sharing rules) that have the potential to enhance cooperation. The third set of experiments addresses suicide attacks. Such attacks are often motivated by retaliation for economic inequality between nations. The researchers will create unequal groups in the lab, and vary the extent of the inequality and the strength of group identity. Participants in the disadvantaged group can volunteer to sacrifice their earnings to improve the performance of their own group. The researchers will assess how sacrificing behavior changes in response to variation in the group properties. In summary, this research addresses the question of whether (and when) these theories provide good descriptions of how people act, and suggests improvements and domain limitations to increase their prescriptive power. The intellectual merit of the proposed activity stems from the development and testing of games designed to model strategic situations in national security. On the development side, this study refines existing games to better capture specific underlying strategic situations, and, for the third category, develops new games to capture the incentives to volunteer in between-group competition. On the testing side, the experiments represent the first data on any of these games, and thus contribute to knowledge of how individuals act in strategic situations. The goal is to identify robust psychological regularities which are likely to apply across a large segment of the population. The broader impacts of the proposed activity stem from increased understanding of how individuals act in these strategic situations. This enables improved decision making by the US and its allies, by identifying and avoiding common mistakes that lead individuals to make sub-optimal decisions. It also improves decision making by identifying the mistakes enemies are likely to make, and helping to describe strategies to exploit them.

该奖项是通过国家安全，冲突和合作竞争的社会和行为方面资助的，NSF与国防部之间的合资企业。在最近的恐怖活动之后，围绕恐怖主义，反恐，预防和安全的许多游戏理论模型。但是，在实验室的野外或风孔环境中，这些理论中很少有行为准确性测试。这项研究使用实验经济学的方法来测试三种类型的理论，这些理论捕获了安全决策的关键特征。第一组实验调查了攻击和防御游戏，其中两个玩家将有限的资源分配在固定目标上，而目标最多的资源赢得了胜利。第二盘测试国家之间在决定是否追求恐怖组织，保护自己的领土或什么都不做的国家合作理论的情况下，这种情况已被塑造为嵌套囚犯的困境游戏。通过实验，调查人员将研究这些游戏的玩法，并探索有可能增强合作的机构（例如贸易制裁或成本共享规则）。第三组实验解决了自杀攻击。这种攻击通常是由于对国家之间经济不平等的报复而激发的。研究人员将在实验室中创建不平等的群体，并改变群体身份的不平等和强度的程度。弱势群体的参与者可以自愿牺牲自己的收入，以提高自己的绩效。研究人员将评估牺牲行为如何响应组属性的变化而变化。总而言之，这项研究解决了这些理论是否（以及何时）对人们的行为方式提供了良好描述的问题，并提出了改进和领域的局限性以提高其规定性。拟议活动的智力优点源于旨在模拟国家安全战略情况的游戏的开发和测试。在开发方面，这项研究完善了现有的游戏，以更好地捕捉特定的潜在战略情况，并且对于第三类，开发了新游戏，以捕获在组间竞争中自愿参加的激励措施。在测试方面，实验代表了这些游戏中任何一个的第一个数据，因此有助于了解个人在战略情况下的行为。目的是确定可能在大部分人群中适用的强大心理规律。拟议活动的更广泛的影响源于对个人在这些战略情况下如何行事的了解。通过确定和避免导致个人做出亚最佳决策的常见错误，这可以改善美国及其盟友的决策。它还通过确定敌人可能会犯错误来改善决策，并帮助描述利用它们的策略。