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We study the long-run conventions emerging in a stag-hunt game when agents are myopic best responders. Our main novel assumption is that errors converge to zero at a rate that is positively related to the payoff earned in the past. To fully explore the implications of this error model, we introduce a further novelty in the way we model the interaction structure, assuming that with positive probability agents remain matched together in the next period. We find that, if interactions are sufficiently persistent over time, then the payoff-dominant convention emerges in the long run, while if interactions are quite volatile, then the maximin convention can emerge even if it is not risk-dominant. We contrast these results with those obtained under two alternative error models: uniform mistakes and payoff-dependent mistakes.

We present an incentivized laboratory experiment where a random sample of individuals playing a series of stag hunt games are forced to make their choices under time constraints, while the rest of the players have no time limits to decide. We find that individuals under the time pressure treatment are more likely to play stag (vs. hare ) than individuals in the control group: under time constraints 62.85% of players are stag -hunters as opposed to 52.32% when no time limits are imposed. These results offer the first experimental evidence on the role of intuition and deliberation in strategic situations that entail social coordination. In interpreting our findings, we provide a discussion on ruling social conventions in daily-life interactions.

This paper introduces and studies a class of evolutionary dynamics—pairwise interact-and-imitate dynamics (PIID)—in which agents are matched in pairs, engage in a symmetric game, and imitate the opponent with a probability that depends on the difference in their payoffs. We provide a condition on the underlying game, named supremacy, and show that the population state in which all agents play the supreme strategy is globally asymptotically stable. We extend the framework to allow for payoff uncertainty, and check the robustness of our results to the introduction of some heterogeneity in the revision protocol followed by agents. Finally, we show that PIID can allow the survival of strictly dominated strategies, leads to the emergence of inefficient conventions in social dilemmas, and makes assortment ineffective in promoting cooperation.

During the last 30 years US citizens experienced, on average, a decline in reported happiness, social connections, and confidence in institutions. We show that a remarkable portion of the decrease in happiness is predicted by the decline in social connections and confidence in institutions. We carry out our investigation in three steps. First, we run a happiness regression that includes various indicators of social connections and confidence in institutions, alongside with own income, reference income, and the usual socio-demographic controls. We find that indicators of social connections and confidence in institutions are positively and significantly correlated with happiness. Second, we investigate the evolution of social connections and confidence in institutions over time, finding that they generally show a declining trend. Third, we calculate the variation in happiness over time as predicted by each of its statistically significant correlates, finding that the decrease in happiness is mainly predicted by the decline in social connections and by the growth in reference income. More precisely, the sum of the negative changes in happiness predicted by the reduction in social connections and the increase in reference income more than offsets the positive change predicted by the growth of household income. Also, the reduction in happiness predicted by the decline in confidence in institutions is non-negligible, although substantially smaller than the one predicted by either social connections or reference income.

In pairwise interactions, where two individuals meet and play a social game with each other, assortativity in cognition means that pairs where both decision-makers use the same cognitive process are more likely to occur than what happens under random matching. In this paper, we show theoretically that assortativity in cognition may arise as a consequence of assortativity in other dimensions. Moreover, we analyze an applied model where we investigate the effects of assortativity in cognition on the emergence of cooperation and on the degree of prosociality of intuition and deliberation, which are the typical cognitive processes postulated by the dual process theory in psychology. In particular, with assortativity in cognition, deliberation is able to shape the intuitive heuristic toward cooperation, increasing the degree of prosociality of intuition, and ultimately promoting the overall cooperation. Our findings rely on agent-based simulations, but analytical results are also obtained in a special case. We conclude with examples involving different payoff matrices of the underlying social games, showing that assortativity in cognition can have non-trivial implications in terms of its societal desirability.

Background Despite being a major advancement in modern medicine, vaccines face widespread hesitancy and refusal, posing challenges to immunization campaigns. The COVID-19 pandemic accentuated vaccine hesitancy, emphasizing the pivotal role of beliefs in efficacy and safety on vaccine acceptance rates. This study explores the influence of efficacy and safety perceptions on vaccine uptake in Italy during the pandemic. Methods We administered a 70-item questionnaire to a representative sample of 600 Italian speakers. Participants were tasked with assessing the perceived effectiveness and safety of each vaccine dose, along with providing reasons influencing their vaccination choices. Additionally, we conducted an experimental manipulation, exploring the effects of four framing messages that emphasized safety and/or efficacy on participants’ willingness to receive a hypothetical fourth vaccine dose. Furthermore, participants were asked about their level of trust in the scientific community and public authorities, as well as their use of different information channels for obtaining COVID-19-related information. Results Our study reveals a dynamic shift in vaccine efficacy and safety perceptions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially influencing vaccination compliance. Initially perceived as more effective than safe, this assessment reversed by the time of the third dose. Beliefs regarding safety, rather than efficacy, played a significant role in anticipating future vaccinations (e.g., the booster dose). Safety-focused messages positively affected vaccination intent, while efficacy-focused messages showed limited impact. We also observed a changing trend in reasons for vaccination, with a decline in infection-related reasons and an increase in social related ones. Furthermore, trust dynamics evolved differently for public authorities and the scientific community. Conclusions Vaccine perception is a dynamic process shaped by evolving factors like efficacy and safety perceptions, trust levels, and individual motivations. Our study sheds light on the complex dynamics that underlie the perception of vaccine safety and efficacy, and their impact on willingness to vaccinate. We discuss these results in light of bounded rationality, loss aversion and classic utility theory.

Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we estimate the variation of subjective well-being experienced by Germans over the last two decades testing the role of some of the major correlates of people’s well-being. Our results suggest that the variation of Germans’ well-being between 1996 and 2007 is well predicted by changes over time of income, demographics and social capital. The increase in social capital predicts the largest positive change in subjective well-being. Income growth, also predicts a substantial change in subjective well-being, but it is compensated for about three fourths by the joint negative predictions due to income comparison and income adaptation. Finally, we find that aging of the population predicts the largest negative change in subjective well-being. This result appears to hinge on the large loss of satisfaction experienced by individuals in old age.

Genetic variants in dopaminergic and serotonergic pathways have been linked to individual differences in social behavior. In this study, we investigated the relationship between eight allelic variants within these pathways and both behavior and beliefs in 99 participants playing an online Public Goods Game (PGG) with and without punishment. Our results show that individuals with the 5-HTTLPR L/L genotype contributed less and had lower expectations of others’ contributions in the absence of punishment; the 5-HTR1B-rs13212041 T/T genotype was associated with lower expectations of antisocial and spiteful punishment; the COMT-rs4680 A/A (Met/Met) genotype was linked to lower expectations of contributions in the presence of punishment. These findings suggest that specific alleles modulate both cooperative behavior and social expectations, suggesting a genetic contribution to individual variability in responses to social dilemmas.

In this paper we investigate the effect of moral suasion on ingroup favouritism. We report a well-powered, pre-registered, two-stage 2x2 mixed-design experiment. In the first stage, groups are formed on the basis of how participants answer a set of questions, concerning non-morally relevant issues in one treatment (assorting on non-moral preferences), and morally relevant issues in another treatment (assorting on moral preferences). In the second stage, participants choose how to split a given amount of money between participants of their own group and participants of the other group, first in the baseline setting and then in a setting where they are told to do what they believe to be morally right (moral suasion). Our main results are: (i) in the baseline, participants tend to favour their own group to a greater extent when groups are assorted according to moral preferences, compared to when they are assorted according to non-moral preferences; (ii) the net effect of moral suasion is to decrease ingroup favouritism, but there is also a non-negligible proportion of participants for whom moral suasion increases ingroup favouritism; (iii) the effect of moral suasion is substantially stable across group assorting and four pre-registered individual characteristics (gender, political orientation, religiosity, pro-life vs pro-choice ethical convictions).

The authors investigate the desirability of income taxes when the objective is to mitigate wasteful conspicuous consumption generated by people's status-seeking behavior. They consider the joint role of pre-tax wage inequality and of social norms determining how social status is assigned. They find that when social status is ordinal (i.e., only one's rank in the income distribution matters) inequality and taxation are substitutes. Instead, when status is cardinal (i.e., also the shape of the income distribution matters) inequality and taxation can be complements, although the relationship is in general non-monotonic. This is because the value of social status is endogenous, potentially giving rise to a perverse self-reinforcing mechanism where more waste in conspicuous consumption induces a greater competition for status and viceversa.