Pérez-Escudero Alfonso, Friedman Jonathan, Gore Jeff
Physics of Living Systems, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139
Physics of Living Systems, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Dec 6;113(49):13995-14000. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1606456113. Epub 2016 Nov 17.
It is common sense that costs and benefits should be carefully weighed before deciding on a course of action. However, we often disapprove of people who do so, even when their actual decision benefits us. For example, we prefer people who directly agree to do us a favor over those who agree only after securing enough information to ensure that the favor will not be too costly. Why should we care about how people make their decisions, rather than just focus on the decisions themselves? Current models show that punishment of information gathering can be beneficial because it forces blind decisions, which under some circumstances enhances cooperation. Here we show that aversion to information gathering can be beneficial even in the absence of punishment, due to a different mechanism: preferential interactions with reliable partners. In a diverse population where different people have different-and unknown-preferences, those who seek additional information before agreeing to cooperate reveal that their preferences are close to the point where they would choose not to cooperate. Blind cooperators are therefore more likely to keep cooperating even if conditions change, and aversion to information gathering helps to interact preferentially with them. Conversely, blind defectors are more likely to keep defecting in the future, leading to a preference for informed defectors over blind ones. Both mechanisms-punishment to force blind decisions and preferential interactions-give qualitatively different predictions, which may enable experimental tests to disentangle them in real-world situations.
在决定采取行动之前，仔细权衡成本和收益是常识。然而，我们常常不赞成这样做的人，即使他们的实际决定对我们有利。例如，比起那些在获取足够信息以确保帮忙不会代价过高之后才同意帮忙的人，我们更喜欢直接同意帮我们忙的人。为什么我们要关心人们如何做决定，而不是只关注决定本身呢？当前的模型表明，对信息收集的惩罚可能是有益的，因为它迫使人们盲目做决定，在某些情况下这会增强合作。在这里我们表明，即使在没有惩罚的情况下，对信息收集的厌恶也可能是有益的，这是由于一种不同的机制：与可靠伙伴的优先互动。在一个多样化的群体中，不同的人有不同且未知的偏好，那些在同意合作之前寻求额外信息的人表明他们的偏好接近他们会选择不合作的临界点。因此，盲目合作者即使情况发生变化也更有可能继续合作，而对信息收集的厌恶有助于优先与他们互动。相反，盲目背叛者未来更有可能继续背叛，导致比起盲目背叛者，人们更偏好有信息依据的背叛者。这两种机制——迫使盲目决定的惩罚和优先互动——给出了质的不同的预测，这可能使实验测试能够在现实世界的情况下将它们区分开来。
