When Lone Wolf Defectors Undermine the Power of the Opt-Out Default.

ABSTRACT: High levels of cooperation are a central feature of human society, and conditional cooperation has been proposed as one proximal mechanism to support this. The counterforce of free-riding can, however, undermine cooperation and as such a number of external mechanisms have been proposed to ameliorate the effects of free-riding. One such mechanism is setting cooperation as the default (i.e., an opt-out default). We posit, however, that in dynamic settings where people can observe and condition their actions on others' behaviour, 'lone wolf' defectors undermine initial cooperation encouraged by an opt-out default, while 'good shepherds' defeat the free-riding encouraged by an opt-in default. Thus, we examine the dynamic emergence of conditional cooperation under different default settings. Sp

SUBMITTER: Ferguson E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7265288 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature