Description
The purpose of this study is to better understand the driving factors behind the watching eye effect and establish the viability and reliability of this effect in altering human behavior to enhance cooperation. Enhancing the knowledge on successful one-shot game interaction in game theory. Two tests were performed to measure this effect. Experiment one tests different characteristics of eyes found in google doodles and whether they have an effect on search term frequencies in google. Search terms are used as a proxy for behavior and can fall within 3 spectrums prosocial, neutral, and antisocial. Experiment two is a survey that will relax the assumption from the previous test that eyes affect completely autonomous thought. In this experiment eyes along with various control variables are tested if they have influence on altruistic and punishing tendencies. The results from the tests vary, experiment one resulted in many significant predictors but do not all behave according to the predicted pattern based on previous research. Experiment two contradict these results by finding no significant predictive power from eyes in any case. A key take away point found in this study is that characteristics in eyes play a role in determining whether the stimulus is effective. Another being that in order to correctly assess the viability and reliability of the watching eye effect one needs to control for external stimulus, characteristics of the participants, and finally the characteristics of the eyes.| Period | 9 Oct 2019 |
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| Held at | Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics |
| Degree of Recognition | Master |