Judging competing theoretical accounts by their empirical content and parsimony: Reply to Myrseth and Wollbrant (2015)

Abstract

Myrseth and Wollbrant (2015) offer an alternative theoretical explanation for our finding that defection entails more cognitive conflict than cooperation (Kieslich & Hilbig, 2014). Although we completely agree that different theoretical explanations for a result are possible, we maintain that the theoretical approach we tested (Rand et al., 2014) is parsimonious and falsifiable, excluding certain plausible results a priori. By comparison, the alternative framework proposed by Myrseth and Wollbrant requires several debatable assumptions to account for our findings, rendering it the more complex theory. Besides, their framework as a whole could have accounted for any possible finding in our experiment, making it impossible to falsify it with our data. We thus conclude that the notion by Rand et al.—that there is a spontaneous disposition to cooperate—has more empirical content while requiring fewer assumptions.

Keywords

• social dilemma
• cooperation
• cognitive conflict
• intuition
• self-control
• theory testing
• empirical content