A Cognitive Model of the Altruistic Mind 1 A COGNITIVE MODEL OF THE ALTRUISTIC MIND

Research in Behavioral Economics and Social Psychology, as well as recent experiments in Experimental Economics, provides evidence that in environments in which decision-makers’ are interdependent, people care about the outcomes of the others as well as their own one. Among the cases in which this happens, particular attention is being paid for those types of social preferences that can be included in the general definition of prosociality. Nevertheless, since research is principally interested in the experimental approach and in the theoretical attempt either to test traditional models or to confute them on the basis of experimental findings, there are few studies that particularly focus on modeling the prosocial choice. This work partially faces this lack and constitutes a first step for an exhaustive cognitive model of prosocial behavior, proposing a formal analysis of the cognitive ingredients of an altruistic mind.