ABSTRACT
Culture is a complex concept that deˆnes features of an individual’s social experience, including beliefs, knowledge, morals, customs, and other habits acquired by humans as members of society (Boellstorff 2006). The role of culture in decision making is poorly understood, and it is often difˆcult to measure and control for in experimental settings. In this chapter, we describe the difˆculty of conducting laboratory experiments to measure cultural afˆliation in interpersonal interactions such as con™ict resolution, where informational uncertainty and feedback delays preclude fully “rational” strategic behavior. Our tactic for overcoming this difˆculty is a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches. For the top-down approach, we use dynamic and realistic interactive computer games that represent particular cases of con™ict. In this case, we present our work with a computer game called PeaceMaker, which we use to observe participant’s actions in a realistic simulation of
Dynamic Decision Making and Cultural Afˆliation ................................................ 33 Laboratory Experiments of Cultural Afˆliation in Con™ict Resolution ..................34 Bottom-Up Approach Using 2 × 2 Games ............................................................... 35
Current Experiments Under the Bottom-Up Approach .......................................36 Top-Down Approach Using PeaceMaker ................................................................. 39
Example of the Top-Down Approach: Group Identiˆcation in PeaceMaker ..................................................................................................... 41 In-Group Favoritism ............................................................................................ 41 Out-Group Perspective-Taking ............................................................................ 42
Group Identiˆcation in a PeaceMaker Experiment .................................................. 42 Experiment Design .............................................................................................. 43 Results .................................................................................................................44 Discussion ...........................................................................................................48
