Opting Out: Conscience and Cooperation in a Pluralistic Society

Opting out against defection leads to stable coexistence with cooperation

Cooperation coexisting with defection is a common phenomenon in nature and human society. Previous studies for promoting cooperation based on kin selection, direct and indirect reciprocity, graph selection and group selection have provided conditions that cooperators outcompete defectors. However, a simple mechanism of the long-term stable coexistence of cooperation and defection is still lacki...

Defaults, Framing and Privacy: Why Opting In Opting Out

Obtaining parental consent--opting in or opting out?

In a population based project aimed at identifying children with specified disabilities within a health region, there was, rightly, concern about the transfer of data on named children across health district boundaries. Two methods of obtaining parental consent for this process were tested. High recruitment rates were achieved using an 'opting out' approach.

Evolution of Cooperation in Public Goods Games with Stochastic Opting-Out

This paper investigates the evolution of strategic play where players drawn from a finite well-mixed population are offered the opportunity to play in a public goods game. All players accept the offer. However, due to the possibility of unforeseen circumstances, each player has a fixed probability of being unable to participate in the game, unlike similar models which assume voluntary participa...

Merely opting out of a public good is moralized: an error management approach to cooperation.

People regularly free ride on collective benefits, consuming them without contributing to their creation. In response, free riders are often moralized, becoming targets of negative moral judgments, anger, ostracism, or punishment. Moralization can change free riders' behavior (e.g., encouraging them to contribute or discouraging them from taking future benefits) or it can motivate others, inclu...