IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pcbi00/1009167.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Risk sensitivity and theory of mind in human coordination

Author

Listed:
  • Pedro L Ferreira
  • Francisco C Santos
  • Sérgio Pequito

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.Author summary: We propose a new computational model characterizing coordination among self-regarding individuals under theory of mind and risk sensitivity. Theory of mind enables decision-making based on the attribution of beliefs, knowledge, or goals to others, whereas different risk sensitivities allows one to assess the impact of different ways of valuing uncertain returns, as captured by descriptive theories from social-economic studies. Together they provide evidence that biases towards optimism, and the capacity for planning ahead, significantly increase coordinated, cooperative action.

Suggested Citation

  • Pedro L Ferreira & Francisco C Santos & Sérgio Pequito, 2021. "Risk sensitivity and theory of mind in human coordination," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(7), pages 1-22, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pcbi00:1009167
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009167
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009167
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009167&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009167?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    2. Hilary Richardson & Grace Lisandrelli & Alexa Riobueno-Naylor & Rebecca Saxe, 2018. "Development of the social brain from age three to twelve years," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 9(1), pages 1-12, December.
    3. Stahl Dale O., 1993. "Evolution of Smartn Players," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 604-617, October.
    4. Charlotte Grosse Wiesmann & Jan Schreiber & Tania Singer & Nikolaus Steinbeis & Angela D. Friederici, 2017. "White matter maturation is associated with the emergence of Theory of Mind in early childhood," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 8(1), pages 1-10, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Oliver Linton & Esfandiar Maasoumi & Yoon-Jae Wang, 2002. "Consistent testing for stochastic dominance: a subsampling approach," CeMMAP working papers 03/02, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    2. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    3. Heiko Karle & Georg Kirchsteiger & Martin Peitz, 2015. "Loss Aversion and Consumption Choice: Theory and Experimental Evidence," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 101-120, May.
    4. Shoji, Isao & Kanehiro, Sumei, 2016. "Disposition effect as a behavioral trading activity elicited by investors' different risk preferences," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 104-112.
    5. Muhammad Kashif & Thomas Leirvik, 2022. "The MAX Effect in an Oil Exporting Country: The Case of Norway," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-16, March.
    6. Jonathan Meng & Feng Fu, 2020. "Understanding Gambling Behavior and Risk Attitudes Using Cryptocurrency-based Casino Blockchain Data," Papers 2008.05653, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2020.
    7. Daniel Fonseca Costa & Francisval Carvalho & Bruno César Moreira & José Willer Prado, 2017. "Bibliometric analysis on the association between behavioral finance and decision making with cognitive biases such as overconfidence, anchoring effect and confirmation bias," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 1775-1799, June.
    8. Robert Gazzale & Julian Jamison & Alexander Karlan & Dean Karlan, 2013. "Ambiguous Solicitation: Ambiguous Prescription," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 1002-1011, January.
    9. Boone, Jan & Sadrieh, Abdolkarim & van Ours, Jan C., 2009. "Experiments on unemployment benefit sanctions and job search behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(8), pages 937-951, November.
    10. Castro, Luciano de & Galvao, Antonio F. & Kim, Jeong Yeol & Montes-Rojas, Gabriel & Olmo, Jose, 2022. "Experiments on portfolio selection: A comparison between quantile preferences and expected utility decision models," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    11. Jos'e Cl'audio do Nascimento, 2019. "Behavioral Biases and Nonadditive Dynamics in Risk Taking: An Experimental Investigation," Papers 1908.01709, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2023.
    12. Luigi Guiso, 2015. "A Test of Narrow Framing and its Origin," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 1(1), pages 61-100, March.
    13. Breaban, Adriana & van de Kuilen, Gijs & Noussair, Charles, 2016. "Prudence, Personality, Cognitive Ability and Emotional State," Other publications TiSEM 9a01a5ab-e03d-49eb-9cd7-4, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    14. Martín Egozcue & Sébastien Massoni & Wing-Keung Wong & RiÄ ardas Zitikis, 2012. "Integration-segregation decisions under general value functions: "Create your own bundle — choose 1, 2, or all 3!"," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 12057, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    15. Howard Kunreuther & Erwann Michel-Kerjan, 2015. "Demand for fixed-price multi-year contracts: Experimental evidence from insurance decisions," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 171-194, October.
    16. Choo, Weihao & de Jong, Piet, 2015. "The tradeoff insurance premium as a two-sided generalisation of the distortion premium," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 238-246.
    17. Francesco GUALA, 2017. "Preferences: Neither Behavioural nor Mental," Departmental Working Papers 2017-05, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    18. Shi, Yun & Cui, Xiangyu & Zhou, Xunyu, 2020. "Beta and Coskewness Pricing: Perspective from Probability Weighting," SocArXiv 5rqhv, Center for Open Science.
    19. Simplice Asongu & Nicholas M. Odhiambo, 2020. "Financial access, governance and insurance sector development in sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 47(4), pages 849-875, February.
    20. Bin Zou, 2017. "Optimal Investment In Hedge Funds Under Loss Aversion," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 20(03), pages 1-32, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pcbi00:1009167. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ploscompbiol (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.