Professor Li Jianbiao’s Research Group Makes New Progress in Resolving Cooperative Confusion, Published in PNAS

Recently, the research group of Professor Li Jianbiao from the School of Economics and the Center for Brain-Like Economics, Shandong University has made new progress in the research of resolving cooperative confusion. The research findings, titled Confusion cannot explain cooperative behavior in public goods games, were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

Professor Li Jianbiao and Postdoctoral Wang Wenhua from the School of Economics and the Center for Brain-Like Economics are the co-corresponding and co-first authors, and Shandong University is the first author and corresponding author institution. Distinguished Researcher Wang Guangrong from the Center for Brain-Like Economics, Professor Niu Xiaofei from the School of Economics/Center for Brain-Like Economics, and Master’s student Wang Yue are co-first collaborators.

This study targets the "confused learner" hypothesis (CLH) in public goods games and re-examines cooperative motivation through multiple groups of experiments. On the one hand, it pioneers a new measurement paradigm to test whether experimental participants are confused—skillfully separating cognitive understanding from practical action, and reaffirming the role of social preferences in driving human cooperation; on the other hand, it deeply analyzes the motivation of human cooperative behavior in human-machine games, clarifying social norms as the main motivation.

This research was supported by the Major and Key Programs of the National Social Science Fund of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province. Focusing on interdisciplinary research on human behavioral biases, Professor Li Jianbiao’s research group has successively published papers in domestic and foreign journals such as Management Science, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Journal of Economic Psychology, and Economic Research (Quarterly). The team was approved as the second batch of scientific research and innovation teams by the School of Economics, Shandong University.