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Nectunt Lab is devoted to the study of cooperative behavior in diverse scientific fields, including the biological and social sciences. Methodologically, we make use of evolutionary game theory and computer simulations to build models that are informed by our findings in controlled experiments, both on-site and online, where we study how humans behave in a number of strategic situations and scenarios. Eventually, a better understanding of humans’ behavioral responses could help developing the largest simulator of human behavior up to date, with the ultimate goal of answering questions such as: What are the mechanisms and real motivations that promote the emergence and evolution of cooperation in humans? How individuals behave in different contexts? How financial bubbles are formed? How does the group size influence collective behavior?

In order to perform our experiments, we are now asking volunteers to subscribe to our Lab database. Help us and join the team by volunteering to the experiments. You will be paid! Please, check the info below to know how to join. And thanks for your cooperation.

For more information, click here

Para más información, descarga este documento

Click here to see a TV interview about the work we do (in Spanish)

 
 
Our Lab members during an experimental session at NECTUNT Lab.

The blog is associated to Nectunt and it is edited by José A. Cuesta, Carlos Gracia-Lázaro, Yamir Moreno and Anxo Sánchez. The Blog will discuss works on Social Dilemmas and Human Behavior. The main objective of the Blog is to discuss the latest results coming out in the areas of Social Dilemmas and Human Behavior, including ours, but mostly, those performed by other researchers. The blog is therefore devoted to the issue of cooperation beyond our own findings and will be open for contributions by other scientists who will be invited to post their own commentaries.

http://nectuntblog.wordpress.com

During the last few years, much research has been devoted to strategic interactions on complex networks. In this context, the Prisoner’s Dilemma has become a paradigmatic model, and it has been established that imitative evolutionary dynamics lead to very different outcomes depending on the details of the network. We here report that when one takes into account the real behavior of people observed in the experiments, both at the mean-field level and on utterly different networks, the observed level of cooperation is the same. We thus show that when human subjects interact in a heterogeneous mix including cooperators, defectors and moody conditional cooperators, the structure of the population does not promote or inhibit cooperation with respect to a well-mixed population.

http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120321/srep00325/full/srep00325.html