Berlin 2015 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 3: Evolutionary Dynamics of Social Systems

SOE 3.2: Talk

Monday, March 16, 2015, 10:15–10:30, MA 001

The Expert Game - Emergence of trust, social capital and exploitation protection in an impersonal environment — •Florian Uekermann — Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark

We present the Expert Game, a simple socio-economic experiment, which mimics professional communication and collaboration in an impersonal environment (using standardized electronic messages).

In the Expert Game, each subject is assigned a task and an expertise. The tasks and expertises are assigned such that each subjects task matches another subjects expertise. The goal for each subjects is to find their expert and receive help from him. Finding this expert can be accelerated by receiving a referral to the expert from a third person. In each round the subjects can choose between asking someone for help or replying to such a request by sending a referral or helping with a task. The subjects face a dilemma: Replies are detrimental to their immediate performance, but nobody can achieve his goal without help.

Our experiments show that in a session of repeated games with 16 subjects, mutual preferential treatment emerges, indicating a mutual trust relationship. We also measure a higher winning efficiency compared to a control with hidden identities.

In simulations using a simple model of the participants behavior, we show how individual reputations lead to exploitation protection and emergence of measurable social capital. We give a generally applicable quantitative definition of social capital and describe how it can be measured.