Abstract When humans engage in social interactions, they are often uncertain about what the possible outcomes are. Because of this, highly sophisticated cooperation strategies may not be very effective. Indeed, some models instead predict the emergence of ‘social heuristics’: simple cooperation strategies that perform well across a range of different situations. Here, we put these predictions to the test in a large-scale interactive decision making experiment. We confronted participants (mostly Belgian university students) with a broad range of cooperative interactions, systematically varying the uncertainty participants had about the consequences of cooperating. As expected, we find that uncertainty about the payoff consequences of cooperation causes individuals to use social heuristics. Additionally, these heuristics directly cause a marked increase in cooperation compared to the treatment without uncertainty, even in situations where cooperation can never be beneficial. These findings provide a new explanation for why human social behavior often violates the standard predictions of economic and evolutionary theory.

中文翻译：

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不确定性导致人类使用社会启发法并更多地合作：比利时大学生的实验

摘要 当人类参与社交互动时，他们往往不确定可能的结果是什么。正因为如此，高度复杂的合作策略可能不是很有效。事实上，一些模型反而预测了“社会启发式”的出现：在一系列不同情况下表现良好的简单合作策略。在这里，我们在大规模交互式决策实验中对这些预测进行了测试。我们与参与者（主要是比利时大学生）进行了广泛的合作互动，系统地改变了参与者对合作后果的不确定性。正如预期的那样，我们发现合作的回报结果的不确定性导致个人使用社会启发式方法。此外，与没有不确定性的治疗相比，这些启发式方法直接导致合作显着增加，即使在合作永远不会有益的情况下也是如此。这些发现为人类社会行为为何经常违反经济和进化理论的标准预测提供了新的解释。