Browsing by Author "Meyer, Leandro F. F."

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Cognition and Norms: Toward a Developmental Theory Linking Trust, Reciprocity, and Willingness to Cooperate
(2009) Meyer, Leandro F. F.
"I suggest that the constructivist developmental framework in psychology is of real significance for advancing our understanding on rational action and normative commitment in social action dilemmas. Yet, the recognition of the implications of the developmental perspective to deal with intersubjective conflicts of action has been hindered by often undisputed epistemological presuppositions which deny cognitive content to 'value judgments,' 'moral questions,' and the existential relevance of consciousness and culture. In this paper, I bring the epistemological issue to the fore in order to introduce a proposal for integrating of the developmental point of view into the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. I rely chiefly upon Jurgen Habermas's discourse theory of ethics and his developmental account of the human capacity to coordinate interaction through communicative action. I then suggest how the implications of the resulting integration can be tested in subsequent experimental research. The interested reader is directed to preliminary experimental results reported elsewhere."
False Rationality and the Tragedy of the Commons: Toward a More Pertinent Approach to Social Dilemmas
(2014) Meyer, Leandro F. F.; Braga, Marcelo José
"In Seven Complex Lessons in Education for the Future, Edgar Morin points to disjunction, false rationality, reductionism and closed specialization as essential problems that challenge our ability to generate pertinent knowledge in general. The standard theory of social dilemmas offers one of the most striking examples of how pertinent knowledge can be lost amid the rationalizations generated by disciplinary specialization. The latest developments in the study of social dilemmas devote an increasing amount of attention to cognition, belief systems, valuations, and language. However, the developments in this field operate almost entirely under epistemological assumptions that recognize only the instrumental form of rationality and deny that 'value judgments' or 'moral questions' have cognitive content. This standpoint erodes the moral feature of the choice situation and prevents the acknowledgment of the links connecting cognition, inner growth, and moral reasoning. It also deemphasizes the significance of these links to achieving cooperative solutions to many social dilemmas. Concurrently, this standpoint renders mysterious the role of communication and mutual understanding in promoting cooperation in those situations. The presentation brings the epistemological issue to the fore in order to introduce a proposal that enlarges the Institutional Analysis and Development framework by integrating moral cognitivism and Action Logic into it to describe orders of development as discrete meaning making stages. The presentation advances an empirical strategy to test the power of alternative models of human valuation to predict the mixed choices of the participants in social dilemmas experiments under similar institutional conditions, including different uses of communication."
Fear or Greed? Duty or Solidarity? Motivations and Stages of Moral Reasoning: Experimental Evidences from Public-Goods Provision Dilemmas
(2009) Meyer, Leandro F. F.; Braga, Marcelo J.
"Judging from the perspective of standard game theory, empirical research has uncovered a rich array of 'anomalies' that systematically occur in situations that were once thought to have properties leading to clear predictions. This is particularly the case for morally relevant conflicts of action, such as social dilemmas related to the appropriation of common-pool resources and provision of public-goods. Explanation of such anomalies has focused on the effects of structural variables and contexts on people's decisions. However, the present study suggest that classifications or typologies based on such descriptors of the action situation are not enough to explain and predict individuals' decisions in social dilemmas because sociocognitive and moral reasoning has its own stages of development and cannot be deduced from the objective incentive structure or context of action alone. In order to examine this proposition we test experimentally the explanatory power of a selected developmental model designed to rationally reconstruct the pretheoretical knowledge of competently judging subjects. Results indicate that the theoretical constructs in the chosen model provide reliable source of information to explain and predict diverse behavioral responses to similar incentive structures in a public-goods provision dilemmas under variable institutional conditions."
Willingness to Cooperate and Stages of Moral Reasoning: Evidences from Common-Pool Resource Experiments with 'Nonbinding' Communication and Sanctioning Conditions
(2009) Meyer, Leandro F. F.; Braga, Marcelo J.
"As economists increasingly recognize the limits of the canonical assumption of self-interest, the lack of a theory of human valuation that clearly specifies how individuals reach utility judgments renders the prediction of rational action in intersubjective, morally relevant conflicts of action virtually impossible. Resting on fundamental assumptions about the cognitive content of the moral judgment, we examine the explanatory power derived from a structuralist-constructivist theory of adult development which presents real analytical significance for understanding behavioral diversity in situations where the individual and the collective interests collide. Experimental results suggest that the theoretical constructs built in the selected model provide reliable basis for predicting participants' behavior in a common-pool resource dilemma under diverse institutional conditions, including communication and sanctioning mechanism. These are selected results from a broader experimental research in which the same developmental model proved useful for elucidating the interplay among value judgments, motivations, internationalities, and decisions in both public-goods and ultimatum game experiments."