Intuitive cooperation refuted: Commentary on Rand et al. (2012) and Rand et al. (2014)

We show that Rand et al. (2012) and Rand et al. (2014)—who argue that cooperation is intuitive—provide an incorrect interpretation of their own data. They make the mistake of inferring intuition from relative decision times alone, without taking into account absolute decision times. We re-examine their data and find that the vast majority of their responses are slow, exceeding four seconds, even in time-pressure treatments intended to promote intuitive responses. Further, a plot of the average cooperation rates by decision time presents no clear relationship between decision time and cooperation. However, among the few decisions that were relatively fast (less than four seconds), there appears to be a positive—not negative— correlation between decision time and cooperation. We conclude that the data presented by Rand et al. (2012) and Rand et al. (2014) fail to provide evidence for the hypothesis that cooperation is intuitive. If anything, their data indicate the opposite.