Towards the biological basis of cooperation
(Arcadi Navarro)
Talking about genome and human evolution. The interesting thing: the effects on social behavior.
After a very interesting introduction to genomic, begins trying to relate genetics with social behavior: because to cooperate can have some explanations in our genes (and this can be the explanation of why humans have been a successful specie): genetic variability for behavioral traits is considerable. The problem is that this is very difficult to interpret. Fortunately, there are some genetics related with economic behavior that can be studied and replicated in labs.
Example: the ultimate game: people trend to make 50:50 offers and to reject less that 30% (not an reasonable decision from an economic point of view). But chimpanzees behaves as rational maximizes in an ultimatum game. Both species have evolve completely different behaviors. Why? we have to study this from a genetic perspective. -> agents playing games are as chimpanzees. And researchers are discovered that serotonin makes individuals to be more generous (just a joke: men have more serotonin than women). Or even between MZ twins, differences in the acceptance threshold in ultimatum game have been observed. Examples with more genes.
Measuring Strategic Uncertainly and Risk in Coordination-, entry-Games and lotteries with fMRI
(Rosemari Nagel)
Uncertainty can be classified as
- exogenous (risk): know the prob. of all possible states of the world (objective prob.)
- endogenous: in absence of endogenously given prob.; -> strategic uncertainty (SU) e.g. outcomes depends on social interaction -games- (subjective prob.)
How brain solve individual or strategic uncertainty? Can we predict choices and brain activity in games?
Results: people behaves similarly in lottery and coordination games, but not in entry games. And the activity in the brain increases in lottery -> coordination -> entry. Some graphics about the different parts of the brain active while playing each type of game. Similar activity in entry games of risk lovers and risk averse people.
Summarizing, the entry games create mode strategic uncertainty as predicted by the nature of the mixed equilibrium which also involves levels of reasoning.