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  • August 28, 2018
  • Article
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Maintaining Trust When Agents Can Engage in Self-deception

By: Andres Babino, Hernan A. Makse, Rafael Di Tella and Mariano Sigman
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Abstract

The coexistence of cooperation and selfish instincts is a remarkable characteristic of humans. Psychological research has unveiled the cognitive mechanisms behind self-deception. Two important findings are that a higher ambiguity about others’ social preferences leads to a higher likelihood of acting selfishly and that agents acting selfishly will increase their belief that others are also selfish. In this work, we posit a mathematical model of these mechanisms and explain their impact on the undermining of a global cooperative society. We simulate the behavior of agents playing a prisoner’s dilemma game in a random network of contacts. We endow each agent with these two self-deception mechanisms which bias her toward thinking that the other agent will defect. We study behavior when a fraction of agents with the “always defect” strategy is introduced in the network. Depending on the magnitude of the biases the players could start a cascade of defection or isolate the defectors. We find that there are thresholds above which the system approaches a state of complete distrust.

Keywords

Behavioral Economics; Cognitive Neuroscience; Corruption; Cooperation; Self-deception; Trust; Behavior

Citation

Babino, Andres, Hernan A. Makse, Rafael Di Tella, and Mariano Sigman. "Maintaining Trust When Agents Can Engage in Self-deception." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 35 (August 28, 2018): 8728–8733.
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About The Author

Rafael M. Di Tella

Business, Government and the International Economy
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  • Causal Inference During A Pandemic: Evidence on the Effectiveness of Nebulized Ibuprofen as an Unproven Treatment for COVID-19 in Argentina By: Sebastian Calonico, Rafael Di Tella and Juan Cruz Lopez Del Valle
  • Does Social Media Cause Polarization? Evidence from Access to Twitter Echo Chambers during the 2019 Argentine Presidential Debate By: Rafael Di Tella, Ramiro H. Gálvez and Ernesto Schargrodsky
  • The 2012 Spanish Labor Reform: Lifting All Boats, or Leveling Down? By: Vincent Pons, Rafael Di Tella, Santiago Botella and Elena Corsi
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