Cognitive Science - Project Presentation

Domain-Specific Reasoning: Social Contracts and Cheating

- Jayant Sharma

Wason Selection Task: Content affects reasoning Cosmides' Research: Social Contracts, a set of cheating detection algorithms still with us Gigerenzer/Hug: Disentangle the concept of social contracts and cheating

Aim: To replicate the results of Cosmides and Gigerenzer/Hug

Methodology

Subjects: 41 subjects, all IIT students 31 boys, 10 girls; age range: 18 – 21 years

Procedure: 6 selection tasks: each consisting of a rule,

an instruction, and a context story 2 versions of each rule 2 series of the 6 tasks containing only one

version of each rule Order of rules and cards randomly ordered Subjects instructed to do problems in order,

without going back to a previous one or changing a previous answer; no time limit

Overview.

Context Story/VersionNo. Rule Series 1 Series 2Theoretical Goal

1 Cassava Cheating(SC) No Cheating(No SC)Replication of

Cosmides' 2 Duiker No Cheating(No SC)Cheating(SC)(1989, Exp 1)_____ 3 Trek Cheating(SC) No Cheating(SC)Replicating

Gigerenzer's 4 Admission No Cheating(SC) Cheating(SC) findings on cheating 5 Treat No Cheating(SC) Cheating(SC) detection6 Bollywood Cheating(SC) No Cheating(SC)

EXAMPLETask 2: Duiker> Rule: If you eat duiker meat, then you have found an ostrich eggshell.> Context Story(SC, Ch): You are an anthropologist studying a mountain tribe. Among them, duiker meat is desirable and scarce, and to earn the privilege of eating it a boy must have found an ostrich eggshell, which is a difficult task representing a boy’s transition to manhood. You are interested in whether boys ever violate this law. Each of the four cards below contain information about a boy. One side tells if they've caught an ostrich egg or not, and the other, if they've had duiker meat or not.> Instruction: Indicate only the card(s) you definitely need to turn over to see if any of these boys violate the rule.

> Context Story(No SC, No Ch): > Cued as an anthropologist again

> Rule seems to exist because, duikers are small antelopes which feed on ostrich eggs> No reference to any social contract

EXAMPLETask 4: Admission> Rule: If the parents of a candidate donate a handsome amount to the college, then the college will grant him/her admission.> Context Story(Cheating, SC): You are a candidate seeking admission in one of the many engineering colleges that have sprung up under the aegis of PTU, Punjab. There is an unofficial rule that only if you donate a handsome amount to the college, can you get admission there. However there is a rumour, that the college you're applying to sometimes cheats people by accepting the donation, and still not granting admission. Each of the four card(s) below represents such a scenario; one side telling whether there was a donation or not and the other tells whether admission was granted or not. > Instruction: Indicate the card(s) you definitely need to turn over to determine if the rule was violated.

> Context Story(No Cheating, SC): > Cued as a curious journalist with an unbiased viewpoint

> Context explains the rule similarly, as a social contract

Results:

Replication of Cosmides'(1989, Exp1)

Predictions Results(in %) Average(Cosm-

ides' avg)

SC Theory Availability Cassava Duiker_ _________P & not-Q responses

Cheating(SC) High Low 57.14 80.00 68.57(75)

No CheatingLow Low 50 47.6248.81(21)

(No SC)

Results not very clear Replicated Cosmides' findings(same tasks as taken by her), but not as forcefully In the second part, particularly because of the anomaly, weak support for the Cheating- detection algorithm; Gigerenzer/Hug reported a a performance difference of 40-50% in each of the tasks they tested Only one of the tasks similar to one taken by Gigerenzer; rest different, original

Likely reason for low difference in performance on the two versions:

Subjects were all from a similar background: engineering/science Expected good logical insight, as reflected in high performance on No SC and No Cheating tasks relative to the original experiments Ideally the pool of subjects should consist of students/people from varying backgrounds