Collective Reasoning as a Moral Point of View

Corinna Elsenbroich, Nigel Gilbert, Rainer Hegselmann

Everybody knows a free rider: the flatmate that does not do the dishes, the friend who never invites back for dinner, the work colleague who pushes work your way. If honest, everyone can probably point to a situation where they did something like this. The same person might be a free-rider in one situation and a collective contributor in the next. What are the triggers of making one choice or the other?

How do these triggers depend on social factors such as observations of behaviours in ones network or the overall population? What are the population outcomes of different social and personal dynamics? And what kinds of social structures strengthen or weaken cooperative behaviour? This project investigates the triggers and social settings of collective or individual choices and the resulting dynamics of cooperation using agent-based modelling.

Funding: AHRC

Duration: July 2014 to July 2016