Open AccessRisk sensitivity and theory of mind in human coordination
Author(s) -
Pedro Ferreira,
Francisco C. Santos,
Sérgio Pequito
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos computational biology/plos computational biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.628
H-Index - 182
eISSN - 1553-7358
pISSN - 1553-734X
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009167
Subject(s) - leverage (statistics) , optimism , action (physics) , cognitive psychology , optimism bias , cognition , psychology , theory of mind , cognitive science , data science , computer science , risk analysis (engineering) , social psychology , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , medicine , physics , quantum mechanics
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.