Risk sensitivity and theory of mind in human coordination

Title

Risk sensitivity and theory of mind in human coordination

 Author

Ferreira, Pedro L. (Lisbon Technical University)
Santos, Francisco C. (Lisbon Technical University)
Gonçalves Melo Pequito, S.D. (TU Delft Team Sergio Pequito)

Date

2021

 Abstract

What humans do when exposed to uncertainty, incomplete information, and a dynamic environment influenced by other agents remains an open scientific challenge with important implications in both science and engineering applications. In these contexts, humans handle social situations by employing elaborate cognitive mechanisms such as theory of mind and risk sensitivity. Here we resort to a novel theoretical model, showing that both mechanisms leverage coordinated behaviors among self-regarding individuals. Particularly, we resort to cumulative prospect theory and level-k recursions to show how biases towards optimism and the capacity of planning ahead significantly increase coordinated, cooperative action. These results suggest that the reason why humans are good at coordination may stem from the fact that we are cognitively biased to do so.


 To reference this document use:

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:75d304cc-e134-44fa-a887-37fbd316f60c

 DOI

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009167

 ISSN

1553-734X

 Source

PLoS Computational Biology (Print), 17 (7)

 Part of collection

Institutional Repository

 Document type

journal article

 Rights

© 2021 Pedro L. Ferreira, Francisco C. Santos, S.D. Gonçalves Melo Pequito
Files
PDF journal.pcbi.1009167.pdf 2.31 MB
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