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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 1, 2026

Measuring the Subjective Value of Risky and Ambiguous Options using Experimental Economics and Functional MRI Methods
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Spontaneous giving and calculated greed.

David G Rand1, Joshua D Greene, Martin A Nowak

  • 1Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. drand@fas.harvard.edu

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|September 22, 2012
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Humans are intuitively cooperative. Quick decisions promote cooperation, while slow, reflective decisions favor self-interest, suggesting intuition supports social dilemmas.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Social Psychology
  • Behavioral Economics

Background:

  • Cooperation is fundamental to human social behavior, often involving personal costs for collective benefit.
  • Understanding the cognitive underpinnings of cooperative decision-making is crucial for explaining social dynamics.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the cognitive basis of human cooperative decision-making using a dual-process framework.
  • To determine whether humans are inherently selfish and require self-control to cooperate, or if intuition drives cooperation while reflection promotes self-interest.

Main Methods:

  • Ten studies employing economic games were conducted to examine cooperative decision-making.
  • Experimental manipulations included decision-making speed (fast vs. slow) and cognitive inductions (intuition vs. reflection).

Main Results:

  • Faster decision-making correlated with increased cooperation across various experimental designs.
  • Forcing quick decisions enhanced contributions, while promoting reflection and slow decisions decreased them.
  • Priming intuitive decision-making increased cooperation compared to priming reflective decision-making.

Conclusions:

  • Cooperation appears to be intuitive, likely due to the development of cooperative heuristics in everyday social interactions.
  • Cognitive reflection can undermine innate cooperative impulses in social dilemmas.
  • Intuition plays a significant role in supporting cooperation in social dilemmas.