Cooperation through Image Scoring: A Replication

Abstract

“Image scoring” is a type of social evaluation, originally used in agent-based models, where the reputation of another is numerically assessed. This phenomenon has been studied in both theoretical models and real-life psychology experiments (using human participants). The latter are aimed to create conditions in the laboratory where image scoring can be elicited. One influential paper is that of Wedekind and Milinski (2000), WM. Our paper is a replication of that study, deliberately employing very similar methodology to the original. Accordingly, we had six groups of ten participants play an economic game. In each round, each player was randomly paired with another player whose identity was unknown. The participant was given a binary choice of either (1) donating money to that person, or (2) not donating money. In each round, the player was passively exposed to information about the past generosity of the other player. In our study, we successfully replicated the central result of WM. Participants in our replication gave significantly more money to partners with higher image scores (more generous reputations) than those with lower image scores (less generous reputations). This paper also provides a critical review of the methodology of WM and the study of image scoring.

Averting Depletion in a Two-Player Common Pool Resource Game: Being Seen, the Expectation of Future Encounters, and Biophilia Play a Role in Cooperation

“…This agrees with previous research that suggests reputation plays an important role in strategic situations. If an individual is considered to be 'trustworthy', then others tend to be more cooperative with them [1,4,42,51,68]. Moreover, as found by Haley and Fessler [27] and Charness and Gneezy [8], having some information-visual, auditory or just representative (i.e.…”

“…Research has shown that when there are opportunities for the formation of reputation, the level of cooperation significantly increases [18]. Reputation can be developed through direct or indirect interactions, thus, collecting information about another individual [1,[66][67][68]. However, some studies have found that cooperation can also occur in circumstances of total anonymity, with individuals who have no information regarding others' actions behaving cooperatively in one-shot games [23].…”

Three Problems of Interdisciplinarity

“…I am not an expert in interdisciplinarity, nor am I a professional philosopher. However, I am a cognitive scientist with a highly interdisciplinary research profile (Gana et al, 2022;Phelps et al, 2018;Phelps & Russell, 2015;Robertson & Russell, 2016;Russell et al 2008Russell et al , 2016Russell et al , 2020Russell, 2011;Russell & Gobet, 2012Russell & Phelps, 2013, etc.). I am not trying to compete with the philosophers of interdisciplinarity (e.g.…”