Thesis title: Contingencies of economic and organizational cooperation: Foundations and applications of a cultural- selectionist approach to choice behavior.
Trial lecture title: Can cooperative choice be established and sustained as a cultural practice in the face of nationalistic movements all over the world?
The ordinary opponents are:
- First opponent: Associate Professor Traci M. Chion, University of North Texas, USA
- Second opponent: Assistant Professor Jonathan V. Krispin, Valdosta State University, USA
- Leader of the evaluation committee: Professor Svein Eikeseth, OsloMet, Norway
The leader of the public defence is Professor Per Holth, OsloMet.
The main supervisor is Head of Studies Ingunn Sandaker, Department of Behavioral Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, Oslo Metropolitan University.
The co-supervisor is professor Bent Bakken, Department of Behavioral Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, Oslo Metropolitan University.
Abstract
Choice denotes the behavior of selecting one course of action among several alternatives. The concept of bounded rationality and its derived heuristics and biases program describes systematic deviations from optimal economic choice behavior.
Choice behavior may be so far from optimum that behavior should be remedied. Recent research shows that it is possible to manipulate the agent’s environment, prompt better informed choices, and steer course of action without coercion.
This dissertation is concerned with socially-situated choice behavior and how cooperation may refer to the arrangement of contingencies that program for best-individual and group-results.
In one cultural-selectionist approach, the metacontingency is the conceptual tool and unit of analysis for capturing group choice behavior.
Study 1
Study 1 provides an account of how the concepts of contingencies and schedules of reinforcement may contribute to informing the sustainability of nudging interventions.
Study 2
Study 2 develops further the concept of a nudge, which is regarded as a subcategory of all environmental events, from a behavior analytic approach, and discusses the ethical implications of behavioral control; especially in the context of policymaking.
Study 3
Study 3 builds on a previous nudging experiment addressing environmental conservation behavior and places it into a behavioral systems perspective.
Function, process and structure of a cultural system are analyzed with respect to the establishing metacontingencies to achieve better societal results.
Study 4
Study 4 includes a revisited prisoner’s dilemma game with delivery of cultural consequences and feedback to increase cooperation among three players.
This experiment shows how cooperation may be modulated by putting the interest of the group before the interest of the individual.
Study 5
Study 5 is a systematic review and meta-analysis of feedback provision on organizational citizenship behavior: similar to discretionary effort, this comprises a form of cooperative organizational behavior.
The results feature a weak size effect. A novel methodological approach to organizational studies is discussed, addressing the measurement of frequency and properties of feedback.
Taken together, the studies propose to integrate hitherto separate conceptual and empirical traditions within the behavioral sciences affecting socially-situated choice behavior.
It signals how the selection of cooperative cultural practices may sustain more sensible (rational) choices.
