This doctoral dissertation is the conclusion of an extended research season during which we investigated three behavioral topics: the role of economic games in elucidating the mechanisms that underlie mental disorders; the determinants of strategic thinking and the determinants of trusting and trustworthy behavior. The dissertation is composed of three chapters, each of which is dedicated to the discussion of one of these topics. In the first chapter, we illustrate the utility of behavioural economic games in providing paradigms for targeting and measuring dysfunctional interpersonal dynamics that accompany psychiatric disorders. To this purpose, we systematically review the studies which use behavioural economic games as benchmarks quantitative measures of social function in order to explore social difficulties in psychiatric subjects. We conclude that behavioural economic games can be considered valid tools to study social dysfunction in mental disorders. In the second chapter, we investigate the determinants of strategic thinking. To this purpose, we consider the influence of three important abilities: mentalizing, empathizing, and cognitive reflection. We compare performances of typical developed and autistic young adults, who are supposed to be impaired in mentalizing, in a Beauty Contest and in a set of Coordination games, two tasks in which a certain level of strategic sophistication is required in order to win. We do not find any significant difference in the performances of our two samples. For this, we argue that the slight impairment registered by our autistic sample in mentalizing seems to be compensated by a decreased empathy and increased cognitive reflection ability, which we both measured through apposite tasks. In fact, as shown in our econometric analysis, empathy and deliberative thinking style dislpay a significant negative and positive impact on strategic thinking, respectively. In the third chapter, we investigate the root of trustworthy behavior, which is hardly explainable by the selfish profit-maximizing perspective. We discuss several theories that tried to give a ratio to trustworthy behavior and we devise an experiment to test if the willingness to repay trust increases with the degree of perceived kindness, as predicted by the kindness-reciprocity theories. For this purpose, we use three variants of the trust game in which the same trustful action from the trustor signals different degrees of kindness: negative, null and positive. According to “reciprocating-kindness” hypothesis, the proportion of repayment should rise across these three games. In addition, since rational first movers should be able to anticipate this outcome, the proportion of trusting actions should similarly rise. Our main findings are that the trustworthy and trustful choices are not statistically different in all three games and this implies that the “reciprocating-kindness” hypothesis is falsified. Our design is also a test for menu dependence hypothesis, according to which we should observe different trustee’s choices depending on the payoff that she would get in case the trustor decides to not to trust her, which corresponds to an unreachable node of the game for her and which differs in each variant of the trust game. Since we find no changes in the proportion of trustworthy choices across the three versions of the trust game, our study fails to report menu dependence. Evidence from our econometric analysis is compatible with guilt-aversion theories which describe the tendency to fulfil others’ manifest expectations in order to avoid the sense of guilt arising from opportunism.
THREE ESSAYS ON MENTAL DISORDERS, STRATEGIC THINKING AND TRUST
CRAPAROTTA, FRANCESCA LINA
2019-06-28
Abstract
This doctoral dissertation is the conclusion of an extended research season during which we investigated three behavioral topics: the role of economic games in elucidating the mechanisms that underlie mental disorders; the determinants of strategic thinking and the determinants of trusting and trustworthy behavior. The dissertation is composed of three chapters, each of which is dedicated to the discussion of one of these topics. In the first chapter, we illustrate the utility of behavioural economic games in providing paradigms for targeting and measuring dysfunctional interpersonal dynamics that accompany psychiatric disorders. To this purpose, we systematically review the studies which use behavioural economic games as benchmarks quantitative measures of social function in order to explore social difficulties in psychiatric subjects. We conclude that behavioural economic games can be considered valid tools to study social dysfunction in mental disorders. In the second chapter, we investigate the determinants of strategic thinking. To this purpose, we consider the influence of three important abilities: mentalizing, empathizing, and cognitive reflection. We compare performances of typical developed and autistic young adults, who are supposed to be impaired in mentalizing, in a Beauty Contest and in a set of Coordination games, two tasks in which a certain level of strategic sophistication is required in order to win. We do not find any significant difference in the performances of our two samples. For this, we argue that the slight impairment registered by our autistic sample in mentalizing seems to be compensated by a decreased empathy and increased cognitive reflection ability, which we both measured through apposite tasks. In fact, as shown in our econometric analysis, empathy and deliberative thinking style dislpay a significant negative and positive impact on strategic thinking, respectively. In the third chapter, we investigate the root of trustworthy behavior, which is hardly explainable by the selfish profit-maximizing perspective. We discuss several theories that tried to give a ratio to trustworthy behavior and we devise an experiment to test if the willingness to repay trust increases with the degree of perceived kindness, as predicted by the kindness-reciprocity theories. For this purpose, we use three variants of the trust game in which the same trustful action from the trustor signals different degrees of kindness: negative, null and positive. According to “reciprocating-kindness” hypothesis, the proportion of repayment should rise across these three games. In addition, since rational first movers should be able to anticipate this outcome, the proportion of trusting actions should similarly rise. Our main findings are that the trustworthy and trustful choices are not statistically different in all three games and this implies that the “reciprocating-kindness” hypothesis is falsified. Our design is also a test for menu dependence hypothesis, according to which we should observe different trustee’s choices depending on the payoff that she would get in case the trustor decides to not to trust her, which corresponds to an unreachable node of the game for her and which differs in each variant of the trust game. Since we find no changes in the proportion of trustworthy choices across the three versions of the trust game, our study fails to report menu dependence. Evidence from our econometric analysis is compatible with guilt-aversion theories which describe the tendency to fulfil others’ manifest expectations in order to avoid the sense of guilt arising from opportunism.
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