It Only Takes One: The Psychology of Unilateral Decisions
Joshua Lewis (New York University), Carter Allen (UC Berkeley), Christoph Winter (ITAM, Harvard University and Institute for Law & AI) and Lucius Caviola (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University)
GPI Working Paper No. 14-2024
Sometimes, one decision can guarantee that a risky event will happen. For instance, it only took one team of researchers to synthesize and publish the horsepox genome, thus imposing its publication even though other researchers might have refrained for biosecurity reasons. We examine cases where everybody who can impose a given event has the same goal but different information about whether the event furthers that goal. Across 8 experiments (including scenario studies with elected policymakers, doctors, artificial-intelligence researchers, and lawyers and judges and economic games with laypeople, N = 1,518, and 3 supplemental studies, N = 847) people behave suboptimally, balancing two factors. First, people often impose events with expected utility only slightly better than the alternative based on the information available to them, even when others might know more. This approach is insufficiently cautious, leading people to impose too frequently, a situation termed the unilateralist’s curse. Second, counteracting the first factor, people avoid sole responsibility for unexpectedly bad outcomes, sometimes declining to impose seemingly desirable events. The former heuristic typically dominates and people unilaterally impose too often, succumbing to the unilateralist’s curse. But when only few people can impose, who know the stakes are high, responsibility aversion reduces over-imposing.
Other working papers
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According to a standard statement of objective consequentialism, a morally right action is one that has the best consequences. More generally, given a choice between two actions, one is morally better than the other just in case the consequences of the former action are better than those of the latter. (These are not just the immediate consequences of the actions, but the long-term consequences, perhaps until the end of history.) This account glides easily off the tongue—so easily that…
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How effective is (more) money? Randomizing unconditional cash transfer amounts in the US – Ania Jaroszewicz (University of California San Diego), Oliver P. Hauser (University of Exeter), Jon M. Jachimowicz (Harvard Business School) and Julian Jamison (University of Oxford and University of Exeter)
We randomized 5,243 Americans in poverty to receive a one-time unconditional cash transfer (UCT) of $2,000 (two months’ worth of total household income for the median participant), $500 (half a month’s income), or nothing. We measured the effects of the UCTs on participants’ financial well-being, psychological well-being, cognitive capacity, and physical health through surveys administered one week, six weeks, and 15 weeks later. While bank data show that both UCTs increased expenditures, we find no evidence that…