Theory of mind and general intelligence in dictator and ultimatum games

DOI10.3390/G9020016MaRDI QIDQ1651890zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Hannes Lang, Michelle Bongard, Gregory J. Deangelo

Publication date 10 July 2018

Published in Games (Search for Journal in Brave)

Copyright license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.3390/g9020016

zbMATH Keywords

dictator gameexperimentintelligencetheory of mindultimatum game

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Rationality and learning in game theory (91A26) Experimental studies (91A90) Decision theory (91B06)

Review text

Summary: Decreasing social sensitivity (i.e., the ability of a person to perceive, understand, and respect the feelings and viewpoints of others), has been shown to facilitate selfish behavior. This is not only true for exogenous changes in social sensitivity, but also for social sensitivity influenced by someone's social cognition. In this analysis, we examined one measure of social cognition, namely a person's theory of mind (ToM), to examine differences in decision-making in standard non-strategic and strategic environments (dictator and ultimatum games). We found that participants with higher ToM gave a greater share in the non-strategic environment. In the ultimatum game, however, ToM showed no correlation with the offers of the ultimators. Instead, we found that general intelligence scores -- measured by the Wonderlic test -- shared a negative, albeit weak, correlation with the amount offered in the ultimatum game. Thus, we find that lower social cognition is an important explanatory variable for selfish behavior in a non-strategic environment, while general intelligence shares some correlation in a strategic environment. Similar to the change in social sensitivity created by a specific game design, social sensitivity influenced by individual personality traits can influence behavior in non-strategic environments.

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Cites work

• A tale of two defectors: the importance of standing for evolution of indirect reciprocity
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• Applying ``theory of mind: theory and experiments
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• Dictator game giving: Rules of fairness versus acts of kindness
• Dual-process reasoning in charitable giving: learning from non-results
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• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1907684 (Why is no real title available?)
• Risk, ambiguity and the Savage axioms
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Cited in

(5)

• Theory of mind predicts cooperative behavior
• How to split gains and losses? Experimental evidence of dictator and ultimatum games
• What can game theory tell us about an AI `theory of mind'?
• The intuition of punishment: a study of fairness preferences and cognitive ability
• Cognitive hierarchy theory and two-person games

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