On the detection of cheating and altruism ¹

Running Head: Cheating and Altruism

Abstract

The key distinction between the evolutionary and deontic reasoning arguments for success in the content filled Wason selection task is the evolutionary utility of the rules being studied. We suggest a critical test by identifying conditions under which the detection of altruism might contribute to reproductive success. We tested this assertion by comparing eight versions of the Wason selection task in which altruism and cheating and the relationships between the actors were manipulated. Some support for our hypotheses was found.

Recently there has been considerable debate about the reasons for context effects in the Wason four card decision task. This task has been described best by Kirby (Kirby, 1994. p 2):

In Wason's four card selection task subjects are presented with four cards that are constrained to have instances from the sets P or not-P on one side and Q or not-Q on the other side. A conditional statement describes an alleged relation between the fronts and the backs of the cards: if a P is on one side of the card, then a Q is on the other. Subjects' task is to select which of the cards should be turned over to determine whether the conditional relation is true or false. ... subjects are usually considered in error when they fail to select the P or not-Q, or when they select the not-P or Q cards, which are logically incapable of violating the conditional.

Three major reasons for this effect have been proposed: Familiarity of the material, deontic reasoning, and evolutionary psychology. While it is clear that familiarity provides a modest boost to success in the reasoning task, it is unable to account for the very large hit rates observed in reasoning tasks involving the violation of a social contract (Cosmides, 1989).

Two types of explanation are current today: deontic thinking and evolutionary psychology. Both are held passionately be their adherents. Both claim to represent the truth. Both claim to have data outruling the claims of their detractors. Two issues seem to be implicated: the first, identified by Cheng and Holyoke (Cheng & Holyoak, 1985) suggests that any permission rule can facilitate success on the reasoning task. The second, introduced by (Gigerenzer & Hug, 1992) suggests that what is important, is not the existence of the rule but that some person has the potential for violating it.

It is rather difficult to rule on the evolutionary versus learned perspective. Cosmides (1989) does so on the basis of consistency with evolutionary biology. She makes much of the distinction between the necessity for detecting cheating, versus the detection of altruism (Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992) versus error detection in general. She argues that only the first, cheater detection, was an evolutionary necessity. She finds no facilitation effect for the detection of altruism over and above the facilitation due to familiarity. The argument goes as follows (Cosmides and Tooby, 1992, p. 193):

The game theoretic models for the evolution of cooperation that could be reasonably applied ... require the existence of some mechanism for detecting cheaters or otherwise excluding them from the benefits of cooperation. This is because the capacity to engage in social exchange could not have evolved in the first place unless the individuals involved could avoid being continually exploited by cheaters. But most models do not require the existence of a mechanism for detecting "altruists" individuals who follow the strategy of paying the required cost (thereby benefiting the other party), but not accepting from the other party the benefit to which this act entitles them. Indeed because individuals who were consistently altruistic would incur costs but receive no compensating benefits, under most plausible scenarios they would be selected out.

Taking the evolutionary perspective a little further, it is useful to ask: Under what conditions might it be useful to detect altruism? The simplest answer would be that altruism is found most strongly among kin (Hamilton, 1964). So that, as well as visual signs, similarity of feature and the like, one indicator of altruism might be individuals engaging in positive behavior for which there was no reciprocation. Detecting this behavior would be useful as one tool in the kin recognition production system. Once kinship has been recognized, people act in altruistic ways toward kinfolk (Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama, 1994; Sime, 1983).

If this speculation is correct, then, under the evolutionary perspective, differential recognition of altruism would be expected when kinfolk and strangers were involved in scenarios based on the Wason selection task. We would expect people to be able to recognize altruism in kinfolk, but not to recognize it in strangers. Similarly, under the cheater perspective, we would expect cheater detection of actions by strangers. Specifically we would expect the following:

1. Subjects with relatives being generous to relatives would have high hit rates.
2. Subjects with relatives cheating relatives would have high hit rates.
3. Subjects with relatives cheating strangers would not have high hit rates (based on the idea that one would not be too concerned if a relative was cheating a non-kinfolk).
4. Subjects with relatives being altruistic to strangers would have low hit rates.
5. Subjects with strangers being altruistic to relatives would have low hit rates; the altruism argument is based on the identification of altruistic kin, not on identifying kin who benefit from strangers.
6. Subjects with strangers cheating relatives would have high hit rates.
7. Subjects with strangers being altruistic to strangers would have low hit rates.
8. Subjects with strangers cheating strangers would have high hit rates.

Method

Sample

Subjects were recruited from business school classes at the National University of Singapore. There were 43% men and 54% women in the sample. Very few had any formal training in logic. The average age was 21.2 years (with a standard deviation of 1.3 years).

Procedure

As part of a larger study³ involving four Wason-type tasks, subjects were given one of eight versions of a task developed by the author: The Job scenario⁴. The scenario manipulated three factors. The first factor was whether or not the scenario involved cheating or generous (altruistic) behavior on the part of the main actor in the scenario. The second factor was whether the subject was cued to see the principal actor as a relative or as a neighbour. The third factor was whether subsidiary actor(s) in the scenario were cued to be relatives or not. Thus we had uncles or neighbours being generous to or cheating strangers or cousins. In one of the job versions, subjects were given a page containing the following information:

The Job

You have an uncle (your father's brother) who might employ you to work in his garden. He has previously employed some of your cousins to work for him. The usual deal is that if you work for a day, you will be paid $50; if you work less than a full day, you get $40. Sometimes your uncle is generous and gives $50 even if you work less than a day, sometimes he is a bit mean and only pays you $40 even if you work a full day.

The four cards below have information about your uncle and one of your cousins. One side tells how long your cousin worked on a particular day, the other tells how much he got paid.

Indicate only those card(s) you definitely need to turn over to see whether your uncle had ever cheated your cousin by paying less than he deserved.

Paid $50.00		Worked a full day		Paid $40.00		Worked less than one day

The words or phrases in italics were different in different versions but were not italicized in the original. In different versions they were replaced with: neighbour .. person (no relation) ... been generous to ... by paying more than they deserved

There is one important point to note about these scenarios: their even-handedness. Each scenario paints the possibility of both altruism and cheating. This is in response to Cheng and Holyoak's (1989) concern with differential cuing in some of Cosmides' scenarios (see Evans & Chang (1995) for a further exploration of this issue).

Each individual received one version of the job scenario. The three factors were fully crossed: cheating versus altruism, uncle versus neighbour, cousin versus stranger. As individual differences in ability to solve logical problems might not be randomly distributed among conditions, we undertook a between subject ANCOVA for the job scenario. The dependent variable in the analysis was the number of hits (p card, and not-q card, and no other card) ⁵ . The covariate was our best estimate of the individuals ability in this kind of task, his or her performance on the simple Griggs and Cox (1982) "bar scene" scenario.

Results

Our hypothesis implies that we should find a three way interaction between Cheating/Altruism, the status (relative or not) of the person doing the hiring, and the status (relative or not) of the person being hired. We found no support for the three way interaction (see Tables 1 and 2). What we did find was a two way interaction between Cheating/Altruism and the status (relative or not) of the person doing the hiring. Subjects had a good chance of detecting altruism in the behavior of relatives, no matter what the target (63%). They were reasonably good at detecting strangers who cheated (48%). They had moderate success (40%) at detecting cheating relatives or altruistic strangers.

Tables 1 & 2 here

We can compare these results with subjects' ability to solve some of the other Wason-type problems. As a baseline, a formal logical task was performed. Only 8 (3.1%) of the 254 students solved it correctly. A second baseline with more meaningful content ("If a person is enrolled in French then the document must indicate that taxes are paid to the French Board" with responses "Enrolled in English," "Enrolled in French," "Pays taxes to the French Board," "Pays taxes to the English Board") was hardly any better answered with a hit rate of 5.5%, for Singapore students this was not a very familiar situation. Hit rates were 54% for the Griggs and Cox (1982) "bar scene" scenario. The point is that these subjects were not very good at solving social contract scenarios in comparison with Cosmides', or Kirby's, or Gigerenzer and Hug's subjects who had 75% hit rates on the "bar scene" scenario ⁶ . However, cheater detection for strangers in the "job" scenario was similar to the detection rate in the "bar scene." Detection of altruistic behavior by relatives was somewhat better; while detection of altruism among strangers, or cheating among relatives was lower than the detection rate in the easy "bar scene" task.

Discussion

These results are consistent with a modified evolutionary approach. Cheating by strangers is identified; altruism engaged in by relatives is most easily identified. However, contrary to our hypotheses, the target of the cheating or altruistic behaviour is irrelevant. A relative's altruism to both other relatives and to strangers is easily identified. Cheating by strangers is equally well identified when aimed at other strangers or at your relatives. However, there is an insignificant trend for altruism by strangers toward relatives to be more easily identified than altruism by strangers toward other strangers (see bottom right-hand corner of Table 1). This is inconsistent with the hypothesis (#5) sketched out earlier, but is consistent with a view that it might be evolutionarily desirable to identify strangers who are well disposed toward your kinfolk..

Subjects in this study were less likely than those in the Harvard/Stanford/ Salzburg experiments to identify cheating. Even in the transparent, high familiarity "bar scene" task (Griggs & Cox, 1982) subjects had fewer hit rates (54%) than those in prior studies (75% to 85%).

The strength of this study lies in the evenhandedness and simplicity of the stories used. Weaknesses lie in the small sample sizes and the consequent loss of power to identify significant interaction effects.

Reasoning and decision making are but the precursors to action. It is time to take this research off the page and out into the laboratory of interpersonal behavior. The interesting questions include: Is a person less likely to detect cheaters if cheaters have to be confronted? Am I less likely to detect altruism if I have to reciprocate? These questions have to be answered through the observation of interpersonal dynamics.

References

Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (Eds.). (1992). The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Burnstein, E., Crandall, C., & Kitayama, S. (1994). Some neo-Darwinian decision rules for altruism: Weighing cues for inclusive fitness as a function of the biological importance of the decision. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 773-789.

Cheng, P. W., & Holyoak, K. J. (1985). Pragmatic reasoning schemas. Cognitive Psychology, 17, 391-416.

Cheng, P. W., & Holyoak, K. J. (1989). On the natural selection of reasoning theories. Cognition, 33, 285-313.

Cosmides, L. (1989). The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition, 31, 187-276.

Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1992). Cognitive adaptations for social exchange. In J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.). (1992). The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. P 163-228.

Gigerenzer, G., & Hug, K. (1992). Domain-specific reasoning: Social contracts, cheating, and perspective change. Cognition, 43, 127-171.

Griggs, R. A., & Cox, J. R. (1982). The elusive thematics material effect in Wason's selection task. British Journal of Psychology, 73, 407-420.

Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behaviour, Part I and II. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, 1-52.

Kirby, K. N. (1994). Probabilities and utilities of fictional outcomes in Wason's four-card selection task. Cognition, 51, 1-28.

Sime, J. D. (1983). Affiliative behavior during escape to building exits. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 3, 21-41.

1. Stranger or Relative.

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Footnotes