ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2024
Confusion cannot explain cooperative behavior in public goods games.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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10 citing papers in PubMed.
- The private solution trap in collective action problems across 34 nations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Apparent learning biases emerge from optimal inference: Insights from master equation analysis.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Indirect punishment can outperform direct punishment in promoting cooperation in structured populations.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Beyond a binary theorizing of prosociality.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Increasing benefits in one-time public goods does not promote cooperation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Reply to Fosgaard and Wengström: Confusion should not be used to explain cooperative behavior in public goods game experiments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Insufficient evidence to conclude that confusion cannot explain cooperative behavior.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Confusion remains an important issue in public goods game experiments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Reply to Strømland et al.: Confusion should be minimized rather than used to explain cooperation in public goods game experiments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Confusion cannot explain cooperative behavior in public goods games.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
Some scholars find that behavioral variation in the public goods game is explained by variations in participants' understanding of how to maximize payoff and that confusion leads to cooperation. Their findings lead them to question the common assumption in behavioral economics experiments that choices reflect motivations. We conduct two experiments, in which we minimize confusion by providing participants with increased training. We also introduce a question that specifically assesses participants' understanding of payoff maximization choices. Our experimental results show that the distribution of behavior types is significantly different when participants play with computers versus humans. A significant increase in contributions is also observed when participants play with humans compared to when they play with computers. Moreover, social norms may be the main motive for contributions when playing with computers. Our findings suggest that social preferences, rather than confusion, play a crucial role in determining contributions in public goods games when playing with humans. We therefore argue that the assumption in behavioral economics experiments that choices reveal motivations is indeed valid.
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