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Full-Text Articles in Social Psychology
Noncompliance With Safety Guidelines As A Free-Riding Strategy: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach To Cooperation During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jose C. Yong, Bryan K. C. Choy
Noncompliance With Safety Guidelines As A Free-Riding Strategy: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach To Cooperation During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jose C. Yong, Bryan K. C. Choy
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Evolutionary game theory and public goods games offer an important framework to understand cooperation during pandemics. From this perspective, the COVID-19 situation can be conceptualized as a dilemma where people who neglect safety precautions act as free riders, because they get to enjoy the benefits of decreased health risk from others' compliance with policies despite not contributing to or even undermining public safety themselves. At the same time, humans appear to carry a suite of evolved psychological mechanisms aimed at curbing free riding in order to ensure the continued provision of public goods, which can be leveraged to develop more …