Workshop: The Puzzle of Social Behavior. Game Theory and Beyond

Time: April 3 – 5, 2025

Place: Center for Interdisciplinary Research, University of Bielefeld

Organisation:

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Spohn, Mantas Radzvilas PhD
Corresponding Applicant: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Spohn

Abstract:

Social reality is built on the capacity of human beings to engage in social behavior – complex forms of intentional, coordinated actions of multiple individuals. In some cases, peoples’ willingness to engage in such behavior can be explained by their self-oriented interest in advancing their personal goals. In other cases, their engagement in such behavior seems to go against their personal interests, necessitating explanations that delve into motivationally relevant factors beyond those to be straightforwardly reduced to narrowly
defined individual interests.

Game theory has served as a dominant conceptual framework for developing theories aiming to explain social behavior, resulting in a number of game-theoretic accounts. Despite their differences, these theories converge on the idea that social behavior is sustained by shared expectations among interacting individuals regarding each other’s actions and their sufficiently aligned valuations of the consequences of combined actions.
The divergence among these accounts lies in their explanations of how these shared expectations and valuations emerge. Main competitors are social norm theories, prosocial preference theories, team reasoning theory, and virtual bargaining theory.
Such accounts are pursued within game theory, philosophy, economics, and cognitive psychology. The aim of the conference is to bring scholars from these disciplines into an intense exchange about the status of these accounts of social behavior.

Call for Submissions:

We intend to publish a call for submissions to address also younger researchers work-ing in this field. These submissions will be reviewed and the ca. 5 best of them will be accepted. In the end, we plan to have ca. 15 invited talks with slots of ≤ 60 minutes and ca. 5 submitted talks slots of ≤ 40 minutes.

Planned Publication:

We envisage the publication of the results of the conference in a special issue of a first-rate journal such as Theory & Decision, Philosophy & Public Affairs, Politics, Journal of Economic Methodology, Games and Economic Behavior, or Synthese. However, we can pursue this idea only after having seen the quality of the conference and asked for the willingness of the participants.

Jason Alexander, LSE

Nick Chater, University of Warwick

Zoé Christoff, University of Groningen

Urs Fischbacher, University of Konstanz

Nathalie Gold, LSE

Francesco Guala, University of Milano

Jurgis Karpus, University of Munich

Willemien Kets, University of Utrecht

Michiru Nagatsu, University of Helsinki

Mantas Radzvilas, University of Konstanz

Gerard Rothfus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Julian Nida-Rümelin, University of Munich

Hannes Rau, University of Karlsruhe (KIT)

Rory Smead, Northeastern University

Wolfgang Spohn, University of Konstanz

Robert Sugden, University of East Anglia

t.b.a.