Psychology of Consciousness Summary for Tuesday, 6/6/17

This week’s topic was on fairness. Psychologists often study fairness and altruism by studying people’s behaviors in classic economic games like the Ultimatum Game and the Dictator Game. We played a few rounds of these types of games and discussed the different strategies that people can use in one-shot (one round) and repeated (multiple rounds with the same person) versions of these games. We also discussed the role of punishment in enforcing cooperation within a society. For the rest of the session, we focused on the idea that people’s responses in these economic games can vary widely across people. We went over evidence showing that the majority of people who participate in psychology studies in the US (typically college undergraduates) are not representative of people around the world. Here is a nice summary of some research that address this point.

Next week will be the last session. Please let me know if there’s anything in particular your kids would like me to cover! Also, I hope that Tobias feels better!

Lily