RIEB Discussion Paper Series No.2023-11

Title

Social Networking Agency and Prosociality Are Inextricably Linked in Economic Games

Abstract

The awareness of individuals regarding their social network surroundings and their capacity to use social connections to their advantage are well-established human characteristics. Economic games, incorporated with network science, are frequently used to examine social behaviour. Traditionally, such game models and experiments artificially limit players' abilities to take varied actions toward distinct social neighbours, thereby constraining their social networking agency. We designed an experimental paradigm that alters this agency and applied it to the prisoner's dilemma (N = 735), trust game (N = 735), and ultimatum game (N = 735) to investigate cooperation, trust, and fairness. Granting participants greater network agency led to more prosocial behaviour across all three economic games, resulting in higher wealth and lower inequality compared to control groups. These findings suggest that incorporating social networking agency into experimental designs better captures the prosocial potential of human behaviour.

Keywords

Behavioural science; Networks; Cooperation; Prosociality

Inquiries

Danyang JIA
School of Cybersecurity, and School of Artificial Intelligence, OPtics and ElectroNics (iOPEN), Northwestern Polytechnical University, CHINA

Ivan ROMIĆ
School of Cybersecurity, and School of Artificial Intelligence, OPtics and ElectroNics (iOPEN), Northwestern Polytechnical University, CHINA
Center for Computational Social Science, Kobe University, JAPAN
Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe
657-8501 Japan
Phone: +81-78-803-7036
FAX: +81-78-803-7059

Lei SHI
School of Statistics and Mathematics, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, CHINA

Qi SU
Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, CHINA
Key Laboratory of System Control and Information Processing, Ministry of Education of China, CHINA
Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Intelligent Control and Management, CHINA

Chen LIU
School of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Northwestern Polytechnical University, CHINA

Jinzhuo LIU
School of Software, and Yunnan Key Laboratory of Software Engineering, Yunnan University, CHINA

Petter HOLME
Center for Computational Social Science, Kobe University, JAPAN
Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, FINLAND

Xuelong LI
School of Cybersecurity, and School of Artificial Intelligence, OPtics and ElectroNics (iOPEN), Northwestern Polytechnical University, CHINA
Institute of Artificial Intelligence (TeleAI), China Telecom Corp Ltd, CHINA

Zhen WANG
School of Cybersecurity, and School of Artificial Intelligence, OPtics and ElectroNics (iOPEN), Northwestern Polytechnical University, CHINA