The restart effect in social dilemmas shows humans are self-interested not altruistic.

ABSTRACT: Do economic games show evidence of altruistic or self-interested motivations in humans? A huge body of empirical work has found contrasting results. While many participants routinely make costly decisions that benefit strangers, consistent with the hypothesis that humans exhibit a biologically novel form of altruism (or "prosociality"), many participants also typically learn to pay fewer costs with experience, consistent with self-interested individuals adapting to an unfamiliar environment. Key to resolving this debate is explaining the famous "restart effect," a puzzling enigma whereby failing cooperation in public goods games can be briefly rescued by a surprise restart. Here we replicate this canonical result, often taken as evidence of uniquely human altruism, and show that it 1) disa

SUBMITTER: Burton-Chellew MN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9894210 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature