Less cognitive conflict does not imply choice of the default option: Commentary on Kieslich and Hilbig (2014)

Less cognitive conflict does not imply choice of the default option: Commentary on Kieslich and Hilbig (2014)

Blog Article

Myrseth and Wollbrant (2015) offer an alternative theoretical explanation for 2" x 4" our finding that defection entails more cognitive conflict than cooperation (Kieslich and Hilbig, 2014).Although we completely agree that different theoretical explanations for a result are possible, we maintain that the theoretical approach we tested (Rand et al., 2014) is parsimonious and falsifiable, excluding certain plausible results a priori.

By comparison, the alternative framework proposed by Myrseth and Wollbrant requires several debatable assumptions to account for our findings, rendering it Bags the more complex theory.Besides, their framework as a whole could have accounted for any possible finding in our experiment, making it impossible to falsify it with our data.We thus conclude that the notion by Rand et al.

---that there is a spontaneous disposition to cooperate---has more empirical content while requiring fewer assumptions.