| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015523)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015523" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 3466 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| Morality Games |
| 311 |
| Psychologists and economists sometimes take this "norm" as given, without asking |
| where it comes from, and a naive reading of Trivers would lead one to think that we |
| should be sensitive to the magnitude of the initial favor and whether it is |
| manipulative. |
| However, according to the above model, reciprocity is the Nash equilibrium, |
| even if the favors are not evenly matched or manipulative, since, in equilibrium, we |
| are neither sensitive to such quantitative distinctions nor to whether the initial reci- |
| procity was manipulative, unless these facts are commonly known. |
| Self-Image Concerns. People sometimes play mental tricks in order to appear to |
| themselves as pro-social. For example, in an experiment, subjects will voluntarily take |
| on a boring task to save another subject from doing it, but if given the option of pri- |
| vately flipping a coin to determine who gets the task, they often flip— and flip, and flip |
| again-until the "coin" assigns the task to the other subject (Batson, Kobrynowicz, |
| Dinnerstein, Kampf, & Wilson, 1997). Why would we be able to fool ourselves and |
| not, say, recognize that we are gaming the coin flip? Why do we care what we think |
| of ourselves at all? Are there any constraints on how we will deceive ourselves? |
| Such self-image considerations can be explained by noting that our self-image can |
| act as a simple proxy, albeit an imperfect one, for what others think of us, and also that |
| we are more convincing to others when we believe something ourselves (Kurzban, |
| 2012; Trivers, 2011). This explanation suggests that the ways we deceive ourselves |
| correspond to quirks described throughout this section— for example, we will absolve |
| ourselves of remaining strategically ignorant even when it is easy not to, or be con- |
| vinced that we have done good by voting, even if we cannot swing an election. |
| Framing Effects. Whether we contribute is highly dependent on the details of the |
| experiment, such as the choice set (List, 2007) and the labels for the different |
| choices (Ross & Ward, 1996; Roth, 1995). Such findings are often taken as evidence |
| that social preferences cannot be properly measured in the lab (Levitt & List, 2007). |
| We believe a more fruitful interpretation is simply that the frame influences |
| whether the laboratory experiment "turns on" our pro-social preferences, perhaps |
| by simulating a situation where cooperation is expected (Levitt & List, 2007). |
| One-Shot Anonymous Giving: We give in anonymous, one-shot settings, such as |
| dictator games. We also sacrifice for others in the real world when there is no chance |
| of reciprocation: Heroes jump on grenades to save their fellow soldiers or block the |
| door to a classroom with their bodies to prevent a school shooter from entering |
| (Rand & Epstein, 2014). This is often seen as evidence for a role of group selection |
| (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003). |
| However, an alternate explanation is that we do not consider the likelihood of |
| reciprocation (Hoffman et al., 2015), as described above. To explain the laboratory |
| evidence, there are two more possibilities. First, subjects may believe there is some |
| chance their identity will be revealed and feel the costs of being revealed as selfish |
| are greater than the gains from the experiment (Delton, Krasnow, Cosmides, & |
| Tooby, 2011). Second, we again emphasize that learned or evolved preferences and |
| ideologies are expected to be applied even in novel settings to which they are not |
| optimized. |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015523 |
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