How mates and grey corruption rig the political game

Sat, 27 Aug 2022 19:31:16 +1000

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://theconversation.com/how-mates-and-grey-corruption-rig-the-political-game-187622>

"If you were a powerful politician, there is a good chance you would make
decisions that favour your mates.

How do we know you might behave in this way? We set up a computer game to see
whether everyday people get seduced into favouring their mates at the expense
of others.

The experiment involved over 600 university students. As in politics, they
could choose to allocate resources most productively for the group as a whole,
or they could allocate resources to a mate, so that their mate could
reciprocate in the future – a revolving door of sorts. If they favoured a mate,
it cost the rest of the experimental society real money.

In 84% of the groups, students were seduced into costly favour-trading that
stole from the others in their group. Astonishingly, those who rigged the game
reported feeling good about it and justified their behaviour as the right thing
to do. After all, looking after mates is pro-social."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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