The Effect Of Decoy On Cooperative Behavior In A Social Dilemma Experiment

The study of social dilemmas focuses on the process of an individual’s assessing and decision making when confronted with conflicts between their own interests and the collective interests,as well as between short-term and long-term interests.Empirical and experimental evidence suggests that people do not always make decisions based on the principle of perfect rationality.Behavioral economics posits that all sorts of cognitive biases hinder individuals from behaving entirely rationally,while cognitive biases are endowed with positive meaning by evolutionary game theory from an adaptive standpoint.Researchers have therefore focused on the positive effects of cognitive biases induced by the decoy effect on cooperative behavior in social dilemma experiments.However,it remains unclear whether this effect could have a detrimental impact on cooperative behavior in such experiments.Consequently,the present study conducted an elaborate prisoner’s dilemma experiment in the context of evolutionary game theory.The experiment introduced the defect decoy(D_D)option as another option between cooperation(C)and betrayal(D).The objective was to investigate whether the presence of the betrayal decoy would hinder cooperative behavior and lead to a higher frequency of betrayal.The study recruited 143 participants,with 72 assigned to the experimental group and 71 to the control group.The former engaged in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma task featuring the options C,D,and D_D,while the latter participated in a similar task with only the options C and D.In comparison to the control group,the experimental group demonstrated a significant decline in the frequency of C and a significant rise in the frequency of D.The frequency of both C and D was observed to be non-stationary over time,with the frequency of C gradually decreasing and the frequency of D gradually increasing,while the frequency of D_Dremained unchanged.Both the experimental and control groups showed a positive correlation between the frequency of C and average payoff per round,and a negative correlation between the frequency of D and average payoff per round.The frequency of D_D,on the other hand,was not correlated with average payoff in the experimental group.These results indicate that the presence of D_Dinhibited cooperative behavior and facilitated betrayal in the social dilemma experiment.However,it is implied that the decoy effect was not solely responsible for the observed behavioral trends.The study assumes that there may be some cognitive bias toward the decoy among participants in the experimental group that prevented their maximum adaptation to the decoy.The hypothesis was tested in Study 2 by verifying the outcomes of Experiment 1 and gauging the emotional arousal of participants before their every decision.Upon completion of the experiment,those who chose the D_Dand received it in the first round of the first encounter/matching??were requested to fill out a questionnaire.The results showed that emotional arousal had a small effect on participants’antagonistic escalation behavior,and there were significant variations in the interpretations of the meaning of D_Dbetween the sender and the receiver.In summary,this study has discovered that the presence of decoys with a betrayal nature restrains cooperative behavior and encourages betrayal behavior in social dilemma experiments.The decision to choose decoys is driven by the cognitive bias induced by the trade-off effect rather than the decoy effect itself.Additionally,there is a distinct difference in how the sender and receiver perceive the meaning of decoy options,which may contribute to the shift in choice from decoy to betrayal.Furthermore,while emotional arousal was found to predict confrontation escalation behavior in participants,it was not the primary reason for the occurrence of such behavior.