Biased perceptions explain collective action deadlocks and suggest new mechanisms to prompt cooperation

Abstract

Summary When individuals face collective action problems, their expectations about others' willingness to contribute affect their motivation to cooperate. Individuals, however, often misperceive the cooperation levels in a population. In the context of climate action, people underestimate the pro-climate positions of others. Designing incentives to enable cooperation and a sustainable future must thereby consider how social perception biases affect collective action. We propose a theoretical model and investigate the effect of social perception bias in non-linear public goods games. We show that different types of bias play a distinct role in cooperation dynamics. False uniqueness (underestimating own views) and false consensus (overestimating own views) both explain why communities get locked in suboptimal states. Such dynamics also impact the effectiveness of typical monetary incentives, such as fees. Our work contributes to understanding how targeting biases, e.g., by changing the information available to individuals, can comprise a fundamental mechanism to prompt collective action.

Intrinsic fluctuations of reinforcement learning promote cooperation

“…Thirdly, noise in the perceptions of agents can affect cooperation in learning and evolutionary dynamics 70 . For example, inaccurate observations can lead to better learning outcomes in faster learning time, the stabilization of an otherwise chaotic learning process, and the mitigation of social dilemmas 71 (Fig.…”

Combining refutations and social norms increases belief change

“…In general, exploration of social norming interventions is important because false beliefs that deviate from a social consensus are not only potential drivers of misinformed and thus potentially harmful behaviours (e.g., Bauman & Geher, 2002;Botvin, Botvin, Baker, Dusenbury, & Goldberg, 1992), but they can also affect public discourse. Specifically, overestimation of the social acceptance of one's view (i.e., a false-consensus effect; Marks & Miller, 1987) can be detrimental if the view is ill-informed: For example, a person assuming that many others share the misconception that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax will be motivated to promote their false view and actively oppose mitigative action (e.g., Santos, Levin, & Vasconcelos, 2021). On the flipside, if a vocal minority keeps a false belief in the public spotlight, this can lead people who hold a factual majority belief to underestimate the social acceptance of their view and falsely assume they are in the minority (i.e., a false-uniqueness effect; Bosveld, Koomen, van der Pligt, Plaisier, 1995).…”

Inequality and Misperceptions of Group Concerns Threaten the Integrity and Societal Impact of Science

“…Social biases may be particularly problematic for collective action problems like climate change or vaccination, where a minimal threshold of cooperation is required. In simulations of public goods games, Santos and colleagues (2021) observe that underestimating others’ cooperative intentions is particularly detrimental to collective action because it requires a high number of default cooperators to avoid deadlock. They also found that a tendency to perceive others’ attitudes as deviating from one’s own can further undermine cooperation intentions.…”