Behavior analysis of choice and impulsivity through the Sharing Game and the delay Discounting game in children and teenagers

• Grant number: 16/22111-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2017
• End date: February 28, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Antonio Celso de Noronha Goyos
• Grantee: Gabriela Esteves Lopes
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Economic games have been useful as experimental models of complex social situations. Psychologists interested in the generosity phenomenon have used economic games to study decision making processes and allocation of resources. One of these games is known as The Sharing Game and research has examined some variables that can influence how people allocate resources, among them: gender of the distributor or of the receiver, human interaction versus computer interaction, real or hypothetical monetary incentive, etc. The main goal of the proposed research is to initially assess whether and to which extent distribution strategies in the Sharing Game are affected by the contextual variables gender and amount of money. In a within-subjects design, two experiments will be conducted involving a repeated-trials game over twenty opportunities in which teenagers will make choices to distribute resources between themselves and an unseen, passive other, either optimally but non-competitively, equally but non-optimally, or least optimally but competitively. The study will also allow a comparison between-subjects about the gender of the participants. These games are important because they allow: to analyze contingencies involved in the decision making of people, characterize the choices as ideal, fair and competitive, and bring under scrutiny the examination of possible effects of other variables (e.g., sex, monetary incentive, amount of money, information, etc.) on the distributions of people's choices to determine whether those choices are stable or influenced by these variables. Subsequently the effects of other variables will be analyzed. (AU)