Human Behaviour

We want to investigate the rational behaviour of each individual in relation to his own benefit and the collective benefit. We use the infrastructure of the Board Games Festival DAU Barcelona to find answers about humans’ behaviour through games and social dilemmas. We develop and design on digital platforms collective experiments to follow the humans’ decision making.

The first experiment of this project was conducted during the DAU in Fabra i Coats (Barcelona, 15 and 16 December 2012). The experiment is based on a model of conflicts that has been studied in detail to model, analyse and/or solve many real world situations: the prisoner’s dilemma.

The prisoner’s dilemma is a fundamental problem in game theory that shows that two people might not cooperate even if it was in the interest of both. In the experiment, participants played repeatedly while having information about the rewards obtained by others. The benefits they obtained were both the result of their own actions and those of his opponents.

In the Edition 2013 of the the Board Games Festival DAU Barcelona, 14 and 15 December 2013, we have developed “Mr. Banks, the stock exchange game”. Based on information related to the financial markets, presented in a funny way, the participants were asked if they think that the market will rise or fall. With the results obtained in the experiment, we try to answer questions such as: How does the information available affect the decision making?, what information do we take into account and what information do we value more ?, how influence the success or failure of previous decisions?, do we learn from the experience?

Partners:
Game Festival DAU Barcelona
BIFI, University of Zaragoza
GISC/Mathematics, University Carlos III of Madrid
Citizen Science Office – Barcelona Lab
University Rovira i Virgili

With support of:

Culture Institute of Barcelona (ICUB) – Barcelona City Council

Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT)