Diego Tapia and Oriana Figueroa, students of the 2017 generation of the Doctorate in Social Complexity Sciences of the Faculty of Government, Universidad del Desarrollo, have just been awarded a research fund by the Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS), Universidad de Santiago.

The project ¿Cuánto nos importan los que vienen?: Altruismo y egoísmo intergeneracional en los recursos naturales. Un enfoque desde teoría de los juegos y la psicología evolutiva (how much do we care about those who come?: intergenerational altruism and selfishness in natural resources. An approach from game theory and evolutionary psychology), carried out by Diego Tapia Ramírez and Oriana Figueroa Valdebenito, together with Carlos Rodríguez Sickert, who are the main researchers, seeks to implement an online experiment to measure the willingness to intergenerational cooperation around natural resources, using game theory as a methodology.

This work was the result of the participation of both students – scholarship holders from the CESS Usach – in the winter schools organized by the University of Oxford (Nuffield College) and the CESS Usach to promote and to support the use of experimental methods in Social Sciences. Each school is a two-week course, whose content includes the design and implementation of social experiments and the analysis tools necessary for its support. On the occasion, a call was made to PhD students from Chile and the United Kingdom. The result was 5 projects being awarded, and this one was the only Chilean project to receive funds.

The project is expected to be completed within a year and will have data from both countries. The students are working in collaboration with Denise Laroze of the CESS, Mauricio Apablaza, Collaborating Researcher of the CICS and Ph.D. in Economy, who supports them in the design, in addition to Carlos Rodríguez Sickert, researcher and sponsoring professor of the CICS.