The Role of Authority and Communication in Cooperation

这个项目将使用博弈论的工具来提高对大群体合作的理解。这些工具已经被其他人用来理解小团体中的合作。然而，从这项工作中得出的见解并没有为更大的群体中发生的事情提供太多的见解。该项目分为两部分。第一部分讨论权威——它是什么，一个人如何获得它，维护它和使用它。其目的是提供一种对权威的理解，这种权威以个人协调其他参与者行动的能力为中心。一个好的权威模型应该有几个特点。首先，当一群人根据个人的声明协调他们的行为时，个人就拥有了权威。其次，拥有权威的个人维持权威和利用权威的动机之间存在紧张关系。第三，太多的灵活性或不可预测性会破坏权威。第四，权威不一定来自某种特殊能力或才能。第五，权威不是来自于人们简单地协调“权威”人物所确定的选择。主要研究人员将建立具有这些特征的模型，并使用它们来分析权威。项目的第二部分着眼于大型团队成员之间沟通的作用。之前关于群体如何随着时间的推移而合作的研究将惩罚作为一个核心因素。人们之所以合作，是因为他们知道如果不合作，他们会受到团体的惩罚。然而，在一个大的群体中，不可能所有的群体成员都立即知道其他人选择了不合作。惩罚只有在小组成员沟通的情况下才有可能。然而，仅仅是交流的可能性并不能保证合作；为了加强合作，人们必须有说出他人真相的动机。项目的这一部分将再次使用博弈论来分析大型群体何时以及如何使用沟通来鼓励合作。这项研究将更好地理解在大型社会群体中合作是如何起作用的。经济学和其他社会科学的一个核心问题是，为什么一些国家或群体的表现不如其他国家或群体好。表现上的差异似乎不能用可用资源的差异来充分解释，这表明社会组织的差异可能很重要。重点是社会组织、权威和沟通的特定方面，因为它们是社会内可能的合作水平的重要决定因素。这项工作将为更多旨在通过提供将社会结构与社会表现联系起来的模型来理解社会之间差异的应用工作奠定基础。

This project will use the tools of game theory to provide an improved understanding of cooperation in large groups. These tools have been used by others to understand cooperation in small groups. However, the insights from this work do not provide much insight into what happens in larger groups.The project has two parts. The first part addresses authority - whatit is, how a person might acquire it, maintain it and use it. The aim is to provide an understanding of authority that centers on an individual's ability to coordinate other players' actions. A good model of authority should have several features. First, an individual has authority when a group of people coordinate their behavior in response to announcements by that individual. Second, there is a tension between the incentives of the individual with authority to maintain that authority and to take advantage of his authority. Third, too much flexibility or unpredictability can destroy authority. Fourth, authority need not necessarily come from some special ability or talent. Fifth, authority does not arise from people simply coordinating on a choice identified by the "authority" figure. The principal investigators will build models with these features and use them to analyze authority.The second part of the project looks at the role of communication between the members of large groups. Previous work on how groups cooperate over time has included punishment as a central ingredient. The idea is that people cooperate because they know that they will be punished by the group for non-cooperation. However, in a large group, it is not likely that all group members will immediately know that someone else has chosen non-cooperation. Punishment is only possible if members of the group communicate. However, the mere possibility of communication won't ensure cooperation; people have to have an incentive to tell the truth about others for cooperation to be enforced. This part of the project will again use game theory to analyze when and how large groups can use communication to encourage cooperation.This research will provide a better understanding of how cooperation does and does not work in large social groups. A central question in economics, and other social sciences, is why some countries or groups do less well than others. The variation in performance does not appear to be adequately explained by differences in available resources, suggesting that differences in social organization are likely to be important. The focus is on particular aspects of social organization, authority and communication, as important determinants of the level of cooperation possible within a society. The work will provide a foundation for more applied work aimed at understanding differences among societies by providing models linking social structure to social performance.