Frontiers in Social Dilemmas Research

438 Pages·1996·31.718 MB·English

by  Wim B. G. Liebrand, David M. Messick (auth.), Prof. Dr. Wim B. G. Liebrand, Prof. Dr. David M. Messick (eds.)

Frontiers in Social Dilemmas Research
Springer
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Budapest
Hong Kong
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Singapore
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Wim B.G. Liebrand
David M. Messick (Eds.)
Frontiers
in Social Dilemmas
Research
With 67 Figures
and 41 Tables
Springer
Prof. Dr. Wim B. G. Liebrand
University of Groningen
Social Science Information Technology
Grote Rozenstraat 15
NL-9712 TG Groningen, The Netherlands
Prof. Dr. David M. Messick
Northwestern University
J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management
356 Leverone Hall
2001 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208-2001, USA
ISBN-13: 978-3-642-85263-3 e-ISBN-13: 978-3-642-85261-9
DOl: 10.1007/978-3-642-85261-9
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Frontiers in social dilemmas research: with 41 tableslWim B. G. Liebrand; David M. Mes
sick (ed.). - Berlin; Heidelberg; New York; Barcelona; Budapest; Hong Kong; London;
Milan; Paris; Santa Clara; Singapore; Tokyo: Springer, 1996
NE: Liebrand. Wim B. G. [Hrsg.]
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Preface
This book contains a selection of the contributions to the 6th International
Conference on Social Dilemmas which was held in Wassenaar, The Nether
lands, in June, 1995. The first of these conferences, held in 1984, had 17
participants, nearly all of whom were social psychologists. The current confer
ence, in contrast, had more than 100 applications coming from many disci
plines. This growth, in a mere 12 years, evidences the importance of the topic
and the breadth of interest in it in the social and behavioral sciences.
This conference would not have happened without the support of the Nether
lands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
(NlAS). They provided a stimulating environment for the research group "Un
derstanding Social Dilemmas" during the 1995/96 academic year. As the
conclusion to this research year, NIAS and the Royal Dutch Academy of Sci
ences (KNA W) provided the opportunity and resources to organize this 6th
Social Dilemma Conference. Although the size of the conference stretched
NIAS's facilities, the conference went smoothly thanks largely to the skill and
diplomacy of the NlAS staff. Without them the conference could not have been
successful nor would this book exist. We are deeply grateful to NIAS, KNA W,
and to the many NIAS people who made this conference a success.
Groningen , Evanston.
March, 1996
Wim Liebrand and David Messick
Contents
Social Dilemmas: Individual, Collective, and Dynamic Perspectives.
Liebrand, W.B.G., & Messick, D.M .......................... .
1 The Collective Perspective; Provision of Resources
Collective Risk Generation and Risk Management: The Unexploited Potential
of the Social Dilemmas Paradigm.
Vlek, C.A.J. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 11
Attitudes toward Public Affairs in a Society in Transition.
Grzelak, J., & Nejtardt, G. ................................ 39
Provision of Community Social Services: The Role of Distributive Fairness for
Willingness to Pay.
Biel, A., Eek D., & Garling, T. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 57
Concentration and Dispersion of Resources in Simulated Organizations Charac
terized by Equal or Unequal Power Relations.
Wilke, H., Dijk, E. van, Morel, K., Olde Monnikhof, M., & Zandvliet, M. 77
2 The Individual Perspective; Cooperation in Experimental Games
Why do 'Cooperators' Cooperate?: Efficacy as a Moderator of Social Motive
Effects.
Kerr, N.£., & Harris, S.E. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 101
Tacit Coordination and Fairness Judgments in Social Dilemmas.
Dijk, E. van & Wilke, H. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 117
Does Knowing the Jointly Rational Solution Make You Want to Pursue it?
Motivational Orientation, Information, and Behavior in two Social Dilemmas.
Foddy, M, & Veronese, D. ............................... 135
Reduction of Environmental Risk as a Public Good.
Wilke, M, Rutte, e.G. & Bornstein, G. ......... . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 157
Hostage Posting as a Mechanism for Co-operation in the Prisoner's Dilemma
Game.
Mlicki, P.P. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 165
VIII
The Effect of Threshold Level on Greed, Fear, and Cooperation in Step-level,
Give-some and Take-some Dilemmas.
Poppe, M, & Zwikker, M ................................ 185
Does "The Motivating Power of Loss" Exist? An Experimental Test of the
Effect of Losses on Cooperation.
Snijders, c., & Raub, W. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 205
3 The Dynamic Perspective; Computer Simulations of Micro-macro
Dynamics
Computer Simulation of Cooperative Decision Making.
Liebrand, W.B.G., & Messick, D.M ......................... 215
Natural Selection and Social Learning in Prisoner's Dilemma: Co-adaptation
with Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Neural Networks.
Macy, M ........................................... 235
Foundations of Rational Interaction in Cognitive Agents: a Computational
Approach.
Conte, R. ........................................... 267
Computer Simulation of Social Value Orientation: Vitality, Satisfaction, and
Emergent Game Structures.
Joireman, J.A., Shelley, G.P., Teta, P.D., Wilding, J., & Kuhlman, D.M 289
The Generalized Exchange Perspective on the Evolution of Altruism.
Takagi, E. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 311
Social Dilemmas in Lineland and Flatland.
Hegselmann, R. ....................................... 337
Selective Play: Social Embeddedness of Social Dilemmas.
Yamagishi, T., & Hayashi N. ......................... . . . .. 363
'Self-organizing' Friendship Networks.
Stokman, F.N., & Zeggelink, E.P.H. ......................... 385
The Evolution of Cooperation in a Simulated Inter-group Conflict
Suleiman, R., & Fisher,!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 419
Social Dilemmas: Individual, Collective, and Dynamic
Perspectives
Wim B. G. Liebrandl and David M. Messick2
SWI, University of Groningen, NL-9712 TG Groningen, NL
I
Department of Organization Behavior, KGSM, Northwestern University,
2
Evanston, IL 60201, USA
1 Introduction
Social dilemmas are complex situations in which we can choose what is in our
own immediate best interest or what is in the best interest of our groups, which
include ourselves as well as others. Finding solutions for social dilemmas consti
tutes one of the most important challenges for the social and behavioral sciences.
Social dilemmas are found everywhere; in both small and large social
groups, in rural as well as urban settings, and in informal as well as formal organi
zations. A real-life example is the temptation to over-harvest fish and other
renewable resources. Each additional ton offish increases the fisherman's profits,
but harms the collective fish stock, ultimately harming not only others but the
fisherman himself. When all fishermen overharvest, the fishery may disappear as
has happened with a number of species of fish. Everyone is worse off. Besides the
overuse of vital resources, the underuse of behavior that would benefit the envi
ronment qualifies as another natural example. If we all walked more and drove
less, we would all breathe better air. Other examples are: nonpaying riders on
public transportation systems, arms reduction, overpopUlation, and information
hoarding.
Social dilemmas are interpersonal and intergroup situations that are charac
terized by an unfortunate pattern of incentives. The pattern is unfortunate because
it tends to create highly unsatisfying outcomes for the participants--outcomes that
are unsatisfying because all of the actors involved realize that each of them
individually would have been much better off if everyone had behaved differently.
The difficulty, however, is that the incentives to behave differently are not to be
found in any short term perspective.
The interest in social dilemmas is widespread throughout the social and
behavioral sciences. That interest arose because of a focus, beginning more or less
with World War II, on the study of decision making. Early models of decision
making were built on the concept of the "rational person" or "dollar maximizer"
who projected the consequences of the various possible actions available, estimated
the probabilities of events not directly under personal control, and then maximized
personal gain.
2
Although the model of the rational person is intuitively compelling and in
some sense "should" be valid, it was immediately apparent that this model was a
poor description of the actual behavior of both lay persons and decision "experts."
In other words, people generally do not conform to the elegant but simple predic
tions that these mathematically-derivedtheories of behavior made. Therefore, from
the beginnings of the formal study of decision making, investigators - especially
those from the social and behavioral sciences-have attempted to construct models
that can better explain the actual behavior of decision makers.
The "discovery" of social dilemmas (in the sense that they could be formally
described) was of major importance in research on decision making because it
provided a formal demonstration of the inadequacy of the rational model to
accompany the empirical demonstration. In a social dilemma, a collection of
rational actors arrive at outcomes which are inferior to ones they could have
received if they had each been "irrational".
Probably because of the combination of theoretical interest and real-world applica
bility, social dilemmas have come to be a major research area within the fields of
experimental social psychology, sociology, political science, economics, manage
ment science, information science, and of course mathematics. More perhaps than
most research fields, the study of social dilemmas always had an interdisciplinary
flavor; conferences and edited volumes devoted to social dilemmas are character
ized by contributions from many disciplines. This interdisciplinary field has been
heavily dominated by game theory and the use of experimental games. By far the
most renowned experimental game is the Prisoner's Dilemma Game, a proto
typical social dilemma.
The Prisoner's Dilemma Game is illustrated in Luce and Raiffa(1957, p. 95) with
the following anecdote.
Two suspects are taken into custody and separated. The district attorney is
certain that they are guilty of a specific crime, but he does not have ade
quate evidence to convict them at a trial. He points out to each prisoner,
separately, that each of them has two alternatives: to confess to the crime
the police are sure they have done, or not to confess. If they both do not
confess, then the district attorney states he will book them on some very
minor trumped-up charge such as petty larceny and illegal possession of a
weapon, and they both will receive minor punishment; if they both confess
they will be prosecuted, but he will recommend less than the most severe
sentence; but if one confesses and the other does not, then the confessor
will receive lenient treatment for turning state's evidence whereas the latter
will get "the book" slapped at him. In terms of years in a penitentiary, the
strategic problem might reduce to:
3
Table 1 The Prisoner's Dilemma.
Prisoner B:
Prisoner A: Not Confess Confess
Not Confess I year each 10 years for A
1 month for B
Confess 1 month for A 5 years each
10 years for B
For each prisoner it is obvious that confessing is better than not confessing,
regardless of what the other prisoner does. Hence it is in their own interest to
confess. The dilemma emerges now: confessing is better for both, thus the ex
pected outcome is 5 years imprisonment for both, but they could have gotten one
year only by not confessing.
The consequences associated with the four possible combination of choices are
such that they result in the preference orderings depicted in Table 2. These prefer
ence orderings represent those of the standard Prisoner's Dilemma Game as used
in much empirical research.
Table 2 Strict preference orderings for a Prisoner's Dilemma Game; (4) most
preferred, (1) least preferred; the first number refers to the prefer
ence for you, the second one refers to the preferences of the other
player.
Other: C Other: D
You: C 3 , 3 1 , 4
You: D 4 , 1 2 , 2
In this situation, C stands for ' cooperation' and D for 'defection'. The D choice,
that is the selfish act, dominates the C choice, the choice in the collective interest.
No matter what choice is made by the other person, the chooser is better off
making the D choice to C. However, a mutual D choice results in the second worst
outcome cell for both persons whereas each could have got a better outcome by
choosing C.