Tesis Doctorales

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A social complexity sciences approach to measuring social dynamics: applications to Bonobo society and an artist community
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2019) Castillo Sepúlveda, Jorge Alexis; David-Barrett, Tamas
Brain Mechanisms underlying prediction during conflict and value-based decision making
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2023) Martínez Molina, María Paz de los Ángeles; Billeke Bobadilla, Pablo
People are able to solve conflictive situations and even anticipate them thanks to adaptive behavior derived from their experience and learning of contextual changes, that allows them to predict what might happen. This prediction is also known as proactive cognitive control, since it allows anticipating what is going to happen and to a possible conflict. According to scientific evidence, theta band oscillatory activity in the prefrontal cortex is associated with cognitive control. Specifically, findings are shown that lateral prefrontal areas are related to the capacity to anticipate an approaching conflict (proactive cognitive control). However, although theta oscillations have been described as a candidate mechanism for cognitive control, it remains unclear whether proactive cognitive control involves theta activity in lateral prefrontal areas in conflictive situations. In more complex scenarios, like value-based decision making, additional factors such as reward expectancy, reward sensitivity, prediction of what might happen, and choice of actions are also involved. It has been described that individuals choose what means the most value to them, according to the reward and the expectancy of the availability of that reward. In spite of reward sensitivity has shown to be fundamental in making decisions, it is still unclear how reward sensitivity modulates behavioral control in the context of prediction and choice during value-based decision making. Considering this background, we carried out two investigations described in sections 3 and 4 of this document. In the first research (section 3), we studied whether theta oscillatory activity plays a causal role in conflict expectancy. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Electroencephalography (EEG), and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) were carried out during cognitive tasks (MSIT and Go Nogo tasks) to establish a causal relationship between theta brain oscillations and cognitive activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex. Results indicated that conflict expectancy increases reaction time, and that there is brain activity in the superior frontal gyrus (SFG) and the inferior frontal junction (IFJ) during the MSIT Task related to the expectancy of conflict and behavioral inhibition, respectively. We also observed that the SFG TMS at theta frequency enhances cognitive control (expectancy of conflict) and modulates theta oscillations in lateral prefrontal regions during the Go Nogo task. In the second research (section 4), we studied how reward sensitivity modulates prediction and choice during value-based decision-making. Two experiments (behavior and fMRI) were performed during a Risk-Learning task to study the effect of reward sensitivity on prediction and choice during value-based decisionmaking. Preliminary results indicated that the rate of learning increases as reward increases, and that with this increased reward there is an increase in ventral striatal activity. The increase in the learning rate indicates that participants are reward-sensitive, as they are guided by rewards when making their decisions and do not incorporate the experience. Taken together, these findings show that theta-band oscillatory activity has a causal role in the expectation of conflict and that reward influences our learning and decision-making.
Challenges of Social Cohesion of Immigrants
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2023) Freire Vidal, Yerka; Muñoz Reyes, José Antonio
Migration is a phenomenon that has acquired great relevance nowadays, and that can generate diverse attitudes in receiving societies. Many countries have fo cused on understanding and reducing discriminatory and xenophobic attitudes towards immigrants, since such attitudes make social cohesion and healthy coexistence impossible, as well as fostering the marginalization of immigrants. Existing data sources for analyzing attitudes towards immigration, mostly surveys and/or experimental designs of specific case studies, provide valuable information; how ever, they impose some difficulties as they require a lot of resources to implement and analyze; in terms of money, time and people. In addition, due to the temporal spacing with which these data are obtained, it is difficult to access the dynamics of the phenomenon, and therefore, it is only possible to obtain a partial picture of what is happening in a society that is changing rapidly and continuously. Today, social networks provide an opportunity to complement and overcome some of the limitations of the data collected through these traditional means. For example, Twitter not only serves as a public space for the exchange of opinions and ideas on various social issues, but also influences the opinions of its users. In this thesis work, three studies are presented that seek to infer and analyze attitudes towards immigration, taking Chilean society as a case study, and using Twitter data as a source of information. The first study presents a methodology based on topi cal analysis of Twitter data to measure, classify and characterize attitudes. The second and third studies, on the other hand, use an XGBoost classifier to infer attitudes towards immigration. In particular, the second study shows a compara tive pre- and post-pandemic analysis of COVID-19 to test one of the Behavioral Immune System (BIS) hypotheses; which indicates that in a pandemic context dis criminatory and xenophobic attitudes towards immigrants should be accentuated. Finally, the third study presents a methodological framework for the analysis of these attitudes from a perspective that characterizes the content, the psycholin guistic dimensions, and the dynamics associated with these attitudes. In general terms, we found that attitudes towards immigration seem to be influenced by news events related to migration. Furthermore, in the use of language, users with pos itive attitudes reveal greater empathy, while those with negative attitudes show a greater perception of threat, consistent with the social theories that explain the different attitudes. Finally, we find that negative attitude users are more vocifer ous, even as an effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, even though we find no robust evidence to support the BIS hypothesis. Our work presents novel methodologies to study attitudes towards immigration using social network data, and provides valuable information for the Chilean migration context. Our results could support the design of appropriate public and social policies that allow for an effective and peaceful integration of immigrants.
Cooperation in social dilemmas: Biological Foundations and context-dependent social norms
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2021-08) Rivera Hechem, María Ignacia; Guzmán Price, Ricardo; Rodríguez-Sickert, Carlos
This dissertation explores biological and institutional factors determining human cooperation using an experimental economics approach. It includes two published articles. The first one is called “No association between genetic variants in MAOA, OXTR, and AVPR1a and cooperative strategies” and the second one is named “Effects of experience with access regimes on stewardship behaviors of small-scale fishers”. The first study explores the genetic basis of cooperative strategies in humans. To do so it assesses the association between the strategies displayed by university students in a public good game with the variability observed in three candidate genetic variants. The latter study explores the role played by formal institutions in fostering cooperative norms in groups of users of natural resources. To do this it compares the cooperative behaviors displayed by artisanal fishers in a common pool resource game framed under two scenarios. Each scenario recreates one of two access regimes these fishers face in their real life. The differences in behavior displayed between the two scenarios are suggestive of the norms and expectations that subjects have internalized under each access regime in real life.
Ecological rationality of moral intuitions: Exploring its description with GARP and its functionality with a jealousy evoking economic game
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 13/03/2020) Barbato Epple, María Teresa; Guzmán, Ricardo; Rodríguez-Sickert, Carlos
This introductory theoretical framework describes the existing literature on the approaches that moral psychology has followed in recent years. Specifically, the advantages and disadvantages of constructing this discipline will be exposed using theories and methodologies from other areas such as: neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and microeconomics, which have visions that allow us to understand how individuals respond to their environment and allow us to build models around how and why moral intuitions arise. We will focus on the evolutionary vision that allows us to understand morality as rules that solve certain ancestral problems that are believed to be relevant to our ancestors. In this context, intuitions have an important role in cooperation and consequently in the reproductive success of humans, for this reason we will change the paradigm that exists in the literature on reason vs. intuition. In which intuitions are thought of irrational behavior due to their close link to emotions. We demonstrate that intuitions are rational and explore their functionality from an evolutionary perspective evoking the moral emotion of jealousy
Evolutionary determinants and hormonal underpinning of men's mating strategies: Correlational and experimental evidence from Chilean samples”
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2022) Fajardo Rodríguez, Gabriela Paz; Polo, Pablo
Humans show a wide variety of mating strategies, from promiscuous mating to the establishment and maintenance of long-lasting pair-bonds, with variation between sexes, within sexes, and within-individuals. The following thesis focuses on men’s mating strategies, from an evolutionary and a proximate approach, presenting the results from two studies. The first one takes the evolutionary perspective, that proposes the variation on mating strategies can be partially explained by phenotypical, social, and environmental factors. We aimed to investigate the traits associated with men’s predisposition to invest in long-term mating to understand the selective pressures that shape the cost-benefit balance that favors men’s parental investment. We obtained that socioeconomic status is the main predictor for long-term mating orientation, while strength is highly associated with short-term orientation in men. The second study considers a proximate approach, where testosterone and immediate social context play a major role in regulating individuals’ mating strategies. We investigated the testosterone-related and social mechanisms involved in the calibration of long and short-term mating strategies, obtaining that the most relevant factor to explain these strategies is the inclusion of a female confederate in the immediate context where the session was carried out. This manuscript brings together approaches from the ultimate and proximate causes for a better understanding of human mating strategies in men.
From sex differences in aggression to intergroup conflict and cooperation: the history that hides women behavior
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2023) Torrico-Bazoberry, Daniel; Muñoz, José Antonio; Polo Rodrigo, Pablo
Intergroup conflict has been a persistent aspect of human societies since the emergence of our species. Various researchers have proposed that competition between groups has acted as a key selective force throughout human evolutionary history. Such intergroup competition for limited resources 18 exacerbated the expression of intergroup aggression and intragroup cooperation. Furthermore, it would have a sexual dimorphism, with men demonstrating increased sensitivity to conflict threats—in order to maximize reproductive opportunities—, while women generally reject from active engagement in intergroup conflict. In the present study, we conducted behavioral experiments under controlled laboratory conditions to measure cooperation and aggression from using virtual games, specifically the Public Good Games and the Point Subtraction Aggression Paradigm, in a sample of 541 participants. We created control and experimental intergroup competition scenarios, where aggression and cooperation were necessary to increase monetary rewards. Our results shows that men modulate aggression and cooperation in the presence of intergroup conflict. In addition, our data also reveals that women cooperate more than men and display heightened levels of cooperation and aggression when confronted with intergroup conflict. These findings prompt a reevaluation of current functional theoretical models concerning the role of women in intergroup conflict and suggest that the dynamics of human aggression and cooperation may be more nuanced than previously believed.
Human reciprocity: behavioural components and neurocognitive signatures discriminating outcomes and intentions in trust-repayment behaviour – and some evolutionary considerations
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2020-09) Aspé Sánchez, Mauricio; Billeke, Pablo; Rodríguez-Sickert, Carlos
Oxytocin (OXT) and arginine-vasopressin (AVP) are two phylogenetically conserved neuropeptides that have been implicated in a wide range of social behaviors. Although a large body of research, ranging from rodents to humans, has reported on the effects of OXT and AVP administration on affiliative and trust behaviors, and has highlighted the genetic contributions of OXT and AVP receptor polymorphisms to both social behaviors and to diseases related to social deficits, the consequences of peptide administration on psychiatric symptoms, and the impact of receptor polymorphisms on receptor function, are still unclear. Despite the exciting advances that these reports have brought to social neuroscience, they remain preliminary and suffer from the problems that are inherent to monogenetic linkage and association studies. As an alternative, some studies are using polygenic approaches, and consider the contributions of other genes and pathways, including those involving DA, 5-HT, and reelin, in addition to OXT and AVP; a handful of report are also using genome-wide association studies. This review summarizes findings on the associations between OXT and AVP receptor polymorphism, social behavior, and psychiatric diseases. In addition, we discuss reports on the interactions of OXT and AVP receptor genes and genes involved in other pathways (like those of dopamine, serotonin, and reelin), as well as research that has shed some light on the impact of gene polymorphisms on the volume, connectivity, and activation of specific neural structures, differential receptor expression, and plasma levels of the OXT and AVP peptides. We hope that this effort will be helpful for understanding the studies performed so far, and for encouraging the inclusion of other candidate genes not explored to date.
Neurobiological coding of value and prediction error in stable and volatility uncertainty contexts in human decision making
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2022-10) Valdebenito, Gabriela; Billeke, Pablo
Los neurocientíficos que estudian el proceso de toma de decisiones económicas se han centrado en investigar cómo los seres humanos, y otras especies animales, eligen entre diferentes opciones guiadas por refuerzo. El cálculo de la probabilidad de obtener una recompensa y el valor de las opciones disponibles son elementos que deben ser estimados con precisión para obtener buenos resultados. Sin embargo, en el contexto de la vida cotidiana, este proceso puede tener diferentes grados de complejidad dependiente del nivel de información que poseamos desde las experiencias previas y que nos entrega el ambiente. La estimación de los factores que afectan una elección implica un proceso de aprendizaje que está mediado por la capacidad de diseñar y actualizar un modelo interno del valor de las probabilidades de las opciones a través de la detección de la magnitud del error de la predicción. Se han investigado extensamente los mecanismos neurobiológicos que subyacen al proceso de toma de decisiones en diferentes contextos de incertidumbre. Para la condición de ambigüedad se ha observado la presencia de actividad en la corteza parietal cuyo rol aún no está claro y es el centro de esta investigación. En la presente tesis se presenta el estudio de la toma de decisiones en diferentes contextos de incertidumbre (estable y volátil) para evaluar los mecanismos neurobiológicos de la computación de la incertidumbre. Para esta investigación se han diseñado dos tareas experimentales con diferentes condiciones que afectan directamente al grado de información que reciben los jugadores para hacer una predicción. Las hipótesis que se evalúan en esta investigación son: (i) La corteza parietal contribuye causalmente en la valorización de la información ambigua durante la toma de decisiones en contextos de incertidumbre estable. (ii) La corteza parietal participa en la detección del cambio de las contingencias en contexto de incertidumbre volátil. Para testear nuestras hipótesis se realizaron dos experimentos: 1. Sesenta y seis participantes resolvieron una tarea de toma de decisiones probabilísticas (PDM) en dos sesiones experimentales. En primera instancia, los sujetos realizaron el experimento bajo resonancia magnética funcional para medir los cambios de la señal BOLD. Nuestro análisis se centró en observar la actividad neurobiológica y conductual asociada a la construcción del valor de las probabilidades en contexto de ambigüedad. Los resultados mostraron una importante activación de la corteza parietal posterior y el surco intra parietal, también se observó actividad en el giro frontal inferior asociado al valor absoluto del error en la predicción. En concordancia con el objetivo de evaluar nuestra hipótesis, en una segunda sesión experimental, los participantes realizaron la misma tarea bajo la medición de la actividad electri siológica y la estimulación inhibitoria previo al feedback en los dos focos de la corteza parietal para perturbar el procesamiento cognitivo y conductual de la probabilidad. Los resultados revelaron que la estimulación de la corteza parietal afectó la construcción de la probabilidad ambigua. Además, se observó una disminución en la actividad theta de la corteza frontal inferior asociado al error en la predicción demostrando un rol causal de la corteza parietal en la computación de la ambigüedad. 2. Treinta participantes resolvieron una tarea de toma de decisiones en contexto de incertidumbre estable y volátil (DMUV). La actividad cerebral fue medida bajo resonancia magnética funcional. Los análisis se centraron en calcular el valor de la función de aprendizaje en cada contexto del experimento y la actividad neurobiológica durante el periodo del feedback. Los resultados mostraron un aumento de la señal BOLD en la corteza parietal asociado a la función de aprendizaje en el contexto de alta incertidumbre volátil.
Psicobiología de la sociosexualidad en hombres. Una aproximación desde la psicometría y la teoría de juegos
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2021-03-11) Figueroa, Oriana; Rodríguez-Sickert, Carlos; Muñoz Reyes, José Antonio
El presente trabajo buscó comprender las estrategias reproductivas en los hombres, integrando aspectos biológicos, psicológicos y conductuales en un marco evolutivo. Se presentan dos manuscritos publicados: “The Male Warrior Hypothesis: Testosterone-related Cooperation and Aggression in the Context of Intergroup Conflict” y “Testing strategic pluralism: The roles of attractiveness and competitive abilities to understand conditionality in men's short-term reproductive strategies”. El primero busca comprender cómo algunos rasgos antropométricos dependientes de testosterona influyen en la cooperación y agresión en diferentes contextos de conflicto intra e intergrupal. La testosterona es una hormona social y se ha establecido su influencia en la competencia intrasexual y el éxito reproductivo en los hombres. El último estudia el papel de los rasgos de atractivo y las habilidades competitivas en las estrategias reproductivas a corto plazo. Con este trabajo estudiamos en una dimensión más específica aquellos aspectos que tienen incidencia tanto en términos intrasexuales como intersexuales, estableciendo que los rasgos de atractivo son más relevantes para el despliegue de estrategias reproductivas en el corto plazo.
Redes psicométricas: aplicadas a la escala Psychopathy Checklist -Revised y a la Encuesta Nacional de Violencia Escolar
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2024) Méndez Hidalgo, Eduardo Andrés; Fábrega Lacoa, Jorge
El campo de la psicometría consiste en cuantificar fenómenos que no son directamente observables. Para lograr esto, se desarrollan instrumentos o escalas que descomponen el fenómeno en aspectos discernibles. Dichos instrumentos son por lo general cuestionarios, en que conjuntos de componentes que son operacionalizados como variables o ítems. Los métodos de análisis en psicometría han logrado una continua sofisticación, gracias a aportes intergeneracionales, y a la creciente disponibilidad y capacidad computacional. Sin embargo, hasta ahora, todos comparten un enfoque común: Los aspectos observables son modelados como indicios -o síntomas en la nomenclatura clínica- de causas subyacentes no observables, o latentes. Al modelar matemáticamente una causa común a los patrones de interrelación observados entre variables, éstas son asumidas como causalmente independientes. Esta manera de formalizar fenómenos psicológicos no siempre ha sido compartida por quienes integran avances empíricos en cuerpos teóricos explicativos, ni por quienes intervienen informadamente en los diversos ámbitos de la disciplina, ya sea en la clínica, organizaciones u otros campos aplicados. La psicometría de redes es un nuevo enfoque que promete reducir esta brecha entre la comprensión práctica y la formalización metodológica de fenómenos psicológicos. Este paradigma propone modelar sus aspectos ya no como indicios parciales e independientes de una causa no observable, sino como componentes interrelacionados, de cuyos patrones de interacción emerge el fenómeno agregado. Con esto, la psicología empírica se ancla a la corriente científica de los sistemas complejos, y puede hacerse de las décadas de aportes que ya han demostrado sus rendimientos en otras áreas del conocimiento. El presente proyecto de tesis aplica estos avances a dos asuntos en que las técnicas tradicionales no han desembocado en consensos fundamentales. El Capítulo 1 se enfoca en el debate sobre la estructura latente de la escala Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R). Durante décadas, dos bandos han enfrentados sus propuestas en publicaciones científicas, conferencias y tribunales. A la fecha no hay consenso en la comunidad de especialistas sobre los aspectos fundamentales en este desorden de la personalidad, en específico sobre su relación con conductas antisociales persistentes. Las metodologías de redes permiten aprehender el fenómeno desde una perspectiva basada en datos, prescindiendo de las fuertes preferencias teóricas encontradas entre los bandos en disputa. El Capítulo 2 aplica esta nueva perspectiva a una encuesta sobre violencia en establecimientos educativos, la cual no busca ser un instrumento específico para medir el constructo de clima escolar, pero que incluye un conjunto de preguntas relacionadas con este fenómeno y las aplica a estudiantes, docentes y directivos. Al no presuponer causas comunes, la psicometría de redes permite analizar las relaciones entre los diversos ámbitos incluidos en la encuesta sin requerir de una escala diseñada expresamente para este propósito. Es a nuestro conocer, la primera vez que se aplica esta metodología al fenómeno del clima escolar, y uno de los primeros esfuerzos por integrar la perspectiva de múltiples informantes a este nuevo enfoque. La psicometría de redes se presenta como alternativa y complemento a las metodologías tradicionales. En ambas investigaciones los hallazgos son respaldados mediante técnicas estadísticas ampliamente utilizadas en psicometría
Text-based link prediction in social networks
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2022) Toledo Román, Ignacio Galvarino; Fábrega Lacoa, Jorge
This thesis aims to contribute to the literature on text-based link prediction methods in scientific collaboration networks with two original works. First, in Chapter I we present a comprehensive survey on text-based link prediction methods in social networks. And second, in Chapter II we introduce a simple but effective approach to improve the performance of text-based link prediction models.
The chilean constituent process: A Computational Social Science approach.
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2022-01) Raveau, María Paz; Couyoumdjian, Juan Pablo
In October 2015, the government of Chile started a constitution-making process, which allowed citizen participation. During the participatory phase, citizens gathered in local selfconvoked encounters to debate on four dimensions: constitutional values, rights, duties, and institutions. For each one of these four dimensions, participants collectively selected seven concepts from a list provided by the government or added new ones. For each concept, they wrote down a short argument explaining why this concept should be included in the new constitution. Although this process did not result in a new Constitution, the citizen consultation resulted in a valuable and unique source of information about people’s social and political preferences. The first objective of this work is related to the constitutional process itself and the citizen participation. The Chilean process exhibited two critical design weaknesses we analyze here. The first one is representativeness: the voluntary nature of the encounters increased participation biases, as those citizens who support the acting government were more likely to participate in the consultation. We study the determining factors of citizen participation in ELAs by setting up various regression models at the municipality-level. We found that engagement in politics and support for the government increases participation, which suggests that citizen involvement in the constitutional process may have been ideologically driven. The second weakness is the group deliberation quality. For a public deliberation to produce epistemic superiority, all the participants should have access to relevant and accurate information and evidence. Then, we analyze the written arguments for each selected concept, using structural topic modeling and natural language processing. We show that the emergent content can be ideologically differentiated, and that groups from municipalities with higher socioeconomic index, on average, produce higher-quality deliberation compared to groups from less developed municipalities. The second object of study comes from the data. The dataset gathered in the local participatory phase provides a rich source of information about people’s political preferences. To map the political ideology, we built co-occurrence networks where the nodes represent the constitutional concepts, and the links represent the association among them. Then, we aim to discover the structure of the ideology by examining the resulting networks, and identifying clusters - highly connected groups of concepts - inside them. The communities we found are consistent with the political conglomerates existing in Chile in 2016. Finally, using natural language processing techniques, we extracted psycho-linguistic features from the argument texts. These features are “internal factors”, for they respond to the intrinsic psychological, emotional, attitudinal or cognitive state of the subject, which affects their political ideology. Next, we set up a discrete choice model to study the effect of those features in cluster membership. We find that the progressive-left cluster shows a more propositive and non-agentic attitude when referring to values, as opposed to the traditional left. Regarding the dimension of rights, the right-wing cluster displays a more valorative attitude, suggesting that first-generation rights may also play the role of values. Throughout all chapters, and by the methods we use, this work attempts to contribute to the field of computational social science.
Understanding collective behaviour and social dynamic systems through a computational social science approach: three study cases
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2018) Candia, Cristián; Rodríguez-Sickert, Carlos; Hidalgo, César A.
Urban mobility: relationship with insecurity and domestic violence
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2023) Contreras Gómez, Hugo Alejandro; Rodríguez-Sickert, Carlos
In this thesis, this mobility measurement approach based on digital traces was used to explore how mobility is related to two social phenomena: insecurity and domestic violence against women. The female mobility patterns are different from males, and these social phenomena have the power to modify their behavior, restricting habits and possibly activities in their daily life
Using experimental game theory to measure cooperative relations in elementary school classrooms to understand its relationship with academic performance and school climate
(Universidad del Desarrollo. Facultad de Gobierno, 2022-05) Landaeta Torres, Víctor; Rodríguez-Sickert, Carlos
Cooperation has been key to our success as a species. Cooperative behavior on multiple levels and the structures that emerge from those interactions have been extending over different domains and scopes, from small food-sharing networks among hunter-gatherers to global trade and the generation and diffusion of knowledge and technology worldwide. Groups and societies have been creating and changing increasingly complex social mechanisms and institutions to allow, promote, and support cooperation and its scaling. All these efforts have boosted and expanded the benefits of cooperation but also have increased our interdependence between different actors, which also implies higher systemic risks. Cooperative Networks in small groups are the essential building blocks to sustain and promote large-scale cooperation. Moreover, large-scale cooperation is possibly our best chance to face today’s most significant global challenges and threats, such as climate change and global pandemics. Schools are crucial for human development. Here, we first face peers and learn how to cooperate with strangers. The school’s main goals are socialization, the transmission of culture, and teaching knowledge and skills. Classrooms, in many ways, have a similar tribe-like structure and a nested and controlled general situation, so dynamic cooperative networks emerge and mutate. Two main challenges for schools nowadays are about learning and well-being. In specific, how can we improve learning and achievement? And, how can we make school a safer, bullying-free place? Cooperative learning literature has consistently found that creating more cooperative learning environments has causal effects on increased academic achievement and decreased bullying behavior. However, no precise mechanism is known. So, our main research question over this work is the following: How cooperative networks in the classroom relate with other educational outcomes, particularly Academic Achievement and Bullying Behavior? But, how can we measure cooperation in the class, and elicit these networks? We propose that we can use experimental Game Theory, specifically implementing in the field an adaptation of a lab game-theoretic social dilemma, which try to reproduce with ecological similarities the tension between individual interests and social efficiency that students face in real life everyday interactions in the classroom. The essential concept is External Validity. We expect that the student’s behavior in the game will reflect their day-to-day behavior and classroom structure. The dyadic social dilemma we implement is a modified version of the Prisoner’s dilemma. A major adjustment is that in this game, students are aware of the partner’s identity that has been matched to them each round, i.e., the game is non-anonymous. Thereby, their choices when playing again each other are not only the result of intrinsic prosocial dispositions (or their absence), but also the result of their history and the perceptions they have about each other. In the first chapter, our first draft paper tackles the relationship between cooperative network topology and academic performance. We measured the cooperative centrality of students by quantifying their deviations from the average level of reciprocal cooperation in each interaction and found that students that engaged in high levels of reciprocal cooperation have significantly higher GPAs. In the second chapter, our second draft paper characterized the relationship between cooperative network topology and bullying subtypes. We categorized students on their bullying involvement in four different social categories: bully, bully-victim, victim, and non-involved students. Then, we use the data from the experiment combined with a self-report instrument and using multilevel modeling, we study how bullies, victims and bully-victims differ in their access to the elicited cooperative network. We found that bully/victims and victims tend to receive less tokens than non-involved students. Both articles have important policy implications to the extent that they can inform the design of interventions in the early phases of education to improve both academic achievement and social coexistence.

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