Inre motivation och yttre sanktion som drivkrafter för prosocialt beteende

This project studies what motivation that drives cooperation and other prosocial behaviours. It contrasts intrinsic motivation to act prosocially with an instrumental selfish motivation to do so in the face of external sanctions. It also explores the relationship between these motivations. For this purpose the project studies three interrelated behavioural game-theoretic models.The first study considers selfish agents who are randomly matched to play a Social Dilemma game. Agents can condition their behaviour on limited information about the opponent’s past actions, thereby potentially enforcing cooperation through threats of sanctions. We test a theory that predicts how the viability of cooperation is affected by payoff parameters and information structure.The second study considers agents who are not entirely selfish and develops a theory of agents motivated by internalised social values, such that violations of the values generate guilt. The values and the understanding of situations is shared with others. The theory can explain a number of experimental findings that elude standard behavioural economics models.The third study develops a model that explores how agents who are motivated by internalised social values and have a simplified understanding of the interaction they face, may behave in a way that is identical to the behaviour of entirely selfish and perfectly informed agents. Since perfect information is costly to acquire prosocial preferences may be adaptive.