Abstract

When acting in social contexts, we are often able to voluntarily coordinate our choices with one another. It has been suggested that this ability relies on the adoption of preferences that transcend those of the individuals involved in the social interaction. Conditional game theory provides a formal framework that facilitates the study of coordinated rational choice in a way that disentangles the concepts of individual preference and group agency. We argue that these concepts are complementary: individual preferences are formed in a social context and groups coordinate as socially influenced preferences interact. In particular, we show that if agents can engage in conditional reasoning and can define their preferences in the form of hypothetical propositions, group-level coordination can be grounded only on the preference of individuals.