Human and monkey responses in a symmetric game of conflict with asymmetric equilibria

Brosnan, Sarah F.; Price, Sara; Leverett, Kelly L.; Prétôt, Laurent; Beran, Michael J.; Wilson, Bart J.

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2017.07.037

Cited by 26 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…One of the main challenges in this field is extending these studies to direct real-time interactions that would entail a broad spectrum of dynamic competitive and cooperative behaviours. In line with this, several recent studies also considered direct social interactions in humans and non-human primates [3][4][5][50][51][52][53][54][55] during dyadic games where players can monitor actions and outcomes of each other. Transparent games allow modelling the players' access to social cues, which is essential for the analysis of experimental data in the studies of this kind [21].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Transparent games allow modelling the players' access to social cues, which is essential for the analysis of experimental data in the studies of this kind [21]. This might be especially useful when behaviour is explicitly compared between "simultaneous" and "transparent" game settings, as in [3,5,50,55]. In particular, the enhanced cooperation in the transparent iBoS for high p see provides a theoretical explanation for the empirical observations in [5], where humans playing an iBoS-type game demonstrated a higher level of cooperation and a fairer payoff distribution when they were able to observe the actions of the partner while making their own choice.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Emergence and suppression of cooperation by action visibility in transparent games

Unakafov

Schultze

Kagan

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Real-world agents, such as humans, animals and robots, observe each other during interactions and choose their own actions taking the partners' ongoing behaviour into account. Yet, classical game theory assumes that players act either strictly sequentially or strictly simultaneously (without knowing the choices of each other). To account for action visibility and provide a more realistic model of interactions under time constraints, we introduce a new game-theoretic setting called transparent game, where each player has a certain probability to observe the choice of the partner before deciding on its own action. Using evolutionary simulations, we demonstrate that even a small probability of seeing the partner's choice before one's own decision substantially changes evolutionary successful strategies. Action visibility enhances cooperation in a Bach-or-Stravinsky game, but disrupts cooperation in a more competitive iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. In both games, strategies based on the "Win-stay, lose-shift" and "Tit-for-tat" principles are predominant for moderate transparency, while for high transparency strategies of "Leader-Follower" type emerge. Our results have implications for studies of human and animal social behaviour, especially for the analysis of dyadic and group interactions.One of the most interesting questions in economics, biological, and social sciences is the emergence and maintenance of cooperation. A popular framework for studying cooperation (or the lack thereof) is Game Theory, which is frequently used to model interactions between "rational" decision-makers. In particular, a model for repeated interactions is provided by iterated games; two settings were previously used [1]:• Simultaneous games: players act at the same time without having any information about the current choice of the partners. Consequently, all players must make a decision under uncertainty concerning the choices of others.• Sequential games: players act in a certain order and the player acting later in the sequence is guaranteed to see the choices of the preceding players. Here the burden of uncertainty only applies to the first player or -if there are more than two players -becomes lighter with every turn in the sequence.Both settings place a simplifying restriction on the decisional context: either all players have no information about the choices of the partners (simultaneous game), or some players always have more information than others (sequential game). This simplification might be disadvantageous for modelling certain behaviours, since humans and animals usually act neither strictly simultaneously nor

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emergence and suppression of cooperation by action visibility in transparent games

Unakafov

Schultze

Kagan

et al. 2018

Preprint

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“…The break of coordination was triggered by the faster agent slowing down and the slower one speeding up and selecting the own color; conversely, the transition to coordination was associated with the speeding up agent selecting the own color and the slowing down agent accommodating.In summary, both species exploited action visibility to achieve and/or maintain the turn-taking, emphasizing the importance of the "transparency" of interactive behavior as an important determinant of emerging strategies. Human agents initiated switches to and from their preferred colors to "fairly" balance the payoffs, similarly to the Conflict game37 , while macaques established competitive dynamics, as predicted by our evolutionary simulations8 . These results add to the body of literature indicating that humans in a social setting might base their decisions not only on pure reward maximization 59 .…”

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confidence: 54%

“…Conversely, the behavior of humans and nonhuman primates differs when the competition can be resolved by turn-taking. In the anti-coordination Conflict game where maximum joint reward is obtained if each agent selects a different icon37 , capuchins and macaques converged on only one of the two possible asymmetric equilibria (much like 4 of our 9 naïve macaque pairs), while 11 out of 27 human pairs balanced payoffs by alternating between the two anti-coordination equilibria (similar to the 10 turn-takers out of our 19 pairs).…”

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confidence: 79%

“…Hence, to achieve optimal and balanced distribution of rewards, agents need to alternate between the two anticoordinated options. Humans, capuchins and rhesus macaques often converged on anticoordination in this game, but importantly, only humans alternated between the two individuallyoptimal choices 37 . Such alternating behavior resulted in the maximal and roughly equal payoff for both agents and is called "cooperative turn-taking" 38 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Human and macaque pairs employ different coordination strategies in a transparent decision game

Moeller

Unakafov

Fischer

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Interactions of group-living primates with conspecifics range from cooperation to competition.Game theory allows testing the strategies that underlie such interactions, but in classical theory, agents act simultaneously or sequentially. Many real-world decisions, however, are made while directly observing partner's actions. To investigate social decision-making under conditions of face-to-face action visibility, we developed a setup where two agents observe each other and reach to targets on a shared transparent display, enabling naturalistic interactions we call "transparent games". Here we compared human and macaque pairs in the transparent version of the coordination game "Bach or Stravinsky", which rewards coordination but entails the conflict about which of the two individually-preferred coordinated options to choose. Most human pairs developed coordinated behavior, and 53% adopted dynamic coordination via turntaking to equalize the payoffs. All macaque pairs also converged on coordination, but in a simpler, static way: persistently selecting one of the two coordinated options or one of the two display sides. Two animals that underwent training with a turn-taking human confederate learned to coordinate dynamically. When tested as a pair, they mostly converged on the faster monkey's preferred option, and a dynamic coordination emerged as animals spontaneously took turns in leading to their respective preferred option and following to the other's. The observed choices were captured by modeling a probability to see the other's action before own movement. Importantly, such competitive turn-taking was unlike the benevolent turn-taking in humans, who equally often initiated switches to and from their preferred option. Our findings demonstrate that dynamic coordination is not restricted to humansalthough it serves a selfish motivation in macaquesand emphasize the importance of action visibility in the emergence and maintenance of coordination.

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Capuchin monkeys (Sapajus[Cebus]apella) play Nash equilibria in dynamic games, but their decisions are likely not influenced by oxytocin

Smith

Leverett

Wilson

et al. 2019

American J Primatol

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Comparative approaches to experimental economics have shed light on the evolution of social decision-making across a range of primate species, including humans. Here we replicate our previous work looking at six pairs of capuchin monkeys' (Sapajus [Cebus] apella) responses to scenarios requiring both coordination (Assurance Game) and anticoordination (Hawk-Dove Game). This then provides a foundation for assessing their responses to two additional games, one with a scenario of beneficial cooperation with a temptation to defect (Prisoner's Dilemma) and one with an environment requiring changing strategies within short temporal proximity (Alternating Economic Game). We additionally explored the effects of exogenous oxytocin on decision-making. Oxytocin did not affect decisions in any of our games. Results from the first two games largely replicated our previous findings. Responses to the Prisoner's Dilemma were more varied than was seen in previous games, with pairs respectively cooperating, defecting, and failing to establish stable strategies. Such variability indicates that this game may be a good assay for individual differences in social decision-making. Finally, capuchins were able to flexibly switch between their previously established strategies within each of the different games, even when the games were presented within the same session, requiring strategy adjustments within short temporal proximity. These results build on earlier findings showing that capuchins can alter decision-making strategies as the context demands, which is likely essential for decision-making in naturally occurring contexts.

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Human and monkey responses in a symmetric game of conflict with asymmetric equilibria

Abstract: to BJW. We thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for comments that have improved the paper, Megan Luetje for recruiting our human participants, and Jeffrey Kirchner for his software programming.

Cited by 26 publications

References 28 publications

Emergence and suppression of cooperation by action visibility in transparent games

Emergence and suppression of cooperation by action visibility in transparent games

Human and macaque pairs employ different coordination strategies in a transparent decision game

Capuchin monkeys (Sapajus[Cebus]apella) play Nash equilibria in dynamic games, but their decisions are likely not influenced by oxytocin

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