Seminar: A mathematical description of decision making processes involving norms and its experimental validation

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Anxo Sánchez, Charles III University of Madrid

A mathematical description of decision making processes involving norms and its experimental validation
In social interactions, human decision-making, attitudes, and beliefs about others (and hence social norms, shared expectations about what people in the group do and what they think should be done) coevolve. Here we attempt to disentangle some of this complexity by using an integrative mathematical modeling and a 35-day behavioral experiment. Our model includes material payoffs in the utility function of each individual along with benefits from complying with the norm, from following one's own beliefs, and for conforming to some external prescription. To validate it, we utilize a Common Pool Resources paradigm with messaging promoting group-beneficial behavior. We show that personal norms and conformity with expected peers' actions have the largest impact on decision-making while material benefits and normative expectations have smaller effects. Messaging greatly decreases the weight of personal norms simultaneously increasing the weight of conformity. It also markedly influences personal norms and normative expectations. Both cognitive and social factors are important in the dynamics of beliefs. Between-individual variation is present in all measured characteristics and notably impacts observed group behavior. Those conclusions are further validated with a larger set of experiments with diferent design, different basic game (Collective Risk Dilemma) and different population (Beijing).

Anxo Sánchez has a PhD in Theoretical Physics (with distinction) from Universidad Complutense de MadridO, Spain, 1991. Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA, 1993 - 1994. Currently, full professor of Applied Mathematics at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, and founder of the research group GISC in 1996. Associated researcher of the Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI), Universidad de Zaragoza. His research deals mostly with the applications of the physics of complex systems to social and biological sciences; he has contributed to the advancement of different fields, from economics to condensed matter physics through ecology, theoretical computer science, history and even law. He has been the PI of some 21 projects, receiving funding from the European Commission, the Spanish government, the Madrid Regional Government, NATO, ESF, and the BBVA Foundation. He is an elected member to the Council and to the Executive Committee of the Complex Systems Society. He is also a member of the expert network of Fundación COTEC “Los 100 de COTEC” and codirector of their Behavioral Economy Lab.

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