Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, 1100 Wien, Austria.
Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Inuyama, Aichi 484-8506, Japan.
Proc Biol Sci. 2022 Apr 27;289(1973):20220128. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2022.0128.
Joint actions are cooperative activities where humans coordinate their actions to achieve individual and shared goals. While the motivation to engage in joint action is clear when a goal cannot be achieved by individuals alone, we asked whether humans are motivated to act together even when acting together is not necessary and implies incurring additional costs compared to individual goal achievement. Using a utility-based empirical approach, we investigated the extent of humans' preference for joint action over individual action, when the instrumental costs of performing joint actions outweigh the benefits. The results of five experiments showed that human adults have a stable preference for joint action, even if individual action is more effective to achieve a certain goal. We propose that such preferences can be understood as ascribing additional reward value to performing actions together.
联合行动是人类协调行动以实现个人和共同目标的合作活动。虽然当一个目标无法单独由个人实现时，参与联合行动的动机是明确的，但我们还想知道，即使联合行动不是必要的，并且与个人目标的实现相比会带来额外的成本，人类是否有动力一起行动。我们使用基于效用的实证方法，研究了当执行联合行动的工具成本超过收益时，人类对联合行动相对于个人行动的偏好程度。五个实验的结果表明，即使个人行动更有效地实现某个目标，成年人类也会稳定地偏好联合行动。我们提出，这种偏好可以理解为将额外的奖励价值归因于共同行动。
