1. Cognitive Science - Project Presentation Domain-Specific Reasoning: Social Contracts and Cheating - Jayant Sharma

2. 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

3. 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

4. Overview. Context Story/Version No.RuleSeries 1Series 2 Theoretical Goal 1CassavaCheating(SC)No Cheating(No SC) Replication of Cosmides' 2 DuikerNo Cheating(No SC)Cheating(SC) (1989, Exp 1)_____ 3TrekCheating(SC)No Cheating(SC) Replicating Gigerenzer's 4AdmissionNo Cheating(SC)Cheating(SC)findings on cheating 5 TreatNo Cheating(SC)Cheating(SC)detection 6 BollywoodCheating(SC)No Cheating(SC)

5. EXAMPLE Task 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

6. EXAMPLE Task 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

7. Results: Replication of Cosmides'(1989, Exp1) Predictions Results(in %) Average(Cosm- ides' avg) SC Theory AvailabilityCassavaDuiker_ _________ P & not-Q responses Cheating(SC)HighLow57.1480.00 68.57(75) No CheatingLowLow5047.62 48.81(21) (No SC)

9.  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

10.  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