Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36686269›Full record

ArticleGames2022

The Black Box as a Control for Payoff-Based Learning in Economic Games.

Maxwell N Burton-Chellew, Stuart A West

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Games, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
0.9field-weighted citation impact, top 21% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed, 4 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Beyond a binary theorizing of prosociality.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024
    Article
  2. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.

Maxwell N Burton-ChellewDepartment of Economics, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5330-0379
Stuart A WestDepartment of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RB, UK.
University of Lausanne · CHUniversity of Oxford · GB

Funding

European Research Council 834164
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The black box method was developed as an "asocial control" to allow for payoff-based learning while eliminating social responses in repeated public goods games. Players are told they must decide how many virtual coins they want to input into a virtual black box that will provide uncertain returns. However, in truth, they are playing with each other in a repeated social game. By "black boxing" the game's social aspects and payoff structure, the method creates a population of self-interested but ignorant or confused individuals that must learn the game's payoffs. This low-information environment, stripped of social concerns, provides an alternative, empirically derived null hypothesis for testing social behaviours, as opposed to the theoretical predictions of rational self-interested agents (

Indexed as

altruismasocial controlbehavioural economicsconditional cooperationconfusiondirectional learningreinforcement learningsocial preferences

Identifiers

PMID36686269
PMCPMC7614088
OpenAlexW4309179891

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.