Craig D. Parks

Social value orientation and cooperation in social dilemmas: A meta-analysis.

This article reports a meta-analysis of 82 studies assessing the relationship between social value orientation (SVO) and cooperation in social dilemmas. A significant and small to medium effect size was found (r = .30). Results supported a hypothesis that the effect size was larger when participants were not paid (r = .39) than when they were paid (r = .23). The effect size was also larger in give-some (r = .29) as opposed to take-some (r = .22) games. However, contrary to expectations, the effect was not larger in one-shot, as opposed to iterated games. Findings are discussed in the context of theory on SVO and directions for future research are outlined.

Trust and Reactions to Messages of Intent in Social Dilemmas

This study examined how low- and high-trust individuals react to messages of intended behavior in a social dilemma situation. Subjects played a two-person prisoners dilemma; the opponent was a reciprocal strategy programmed by the experimenter. During the game, subjects received a message stating that the opponent planned to be cooperative or competitive for the remainder of the game. In Study 1, low trusters reacted to the competitive message by decreasing cooperation but were unaffected by the cooperative message; high trusters reacted to the cooperative message by increasing cooperation but were unaffected by the competitive message. Study 2 showed that a period of unconditional, message-consistent behavior immediately after the message can make low and high trusters responsive to cooperative and competitive messages, respectively. However, the number of unconditional responses was crucial. The study also found that stated intention and message-inconsistent behavior affect perceptions of the opponents trustworthiness.

Social Dilemma Behavior of Individuals from Highly Individualist and Collectivist Cultures

Existing studies of social dilemmas in other cultures report patterns of behavior that are very similar to that of American subjects. This has held even in cultures that are seemingly quite different from the United States in terms of their emphasis on the collective over the individual. We argue that, in fact, these cultures are not as different from the United States with regard to collectivity as they seem. In our study, we contrast the American—the most individualistic of all cultures—with the Vietnamese, an extremely collectivist culture. In the first study, American and South Vietnamese subjects played a number of trials of a public goods or resource dilemma game. The patterns of cooperation among the Americans were typical of most social dilemma studies. The Vietnamese, however, cooperated at an exceptionally high rate. In a second study, subjects were pitted against a variety of preprogrammed strategies that varied as to their toughness. The Americans responded in predictable ways, but the Vietnamese were again extremely cooperative, even when competing against an All-D (100% competition) strategy. The results suggest that cultural norms contribute somewhat to mixed-motive behavior.

Group performance and interaction

* Introduction and Overview Basic Group Processes * The Experience of Group Membership * Group Influence Group Performance And Interaction * Group Decisionmaking * Social Facilitation * Social Motivation Losses * Social Dilemmas Specific Types Of Groups * Groups in the Workplace * Juries * Computer-Based Groups * Unique Groups * Future Directions in Group Research Summary

Cooperation, Trust, and Antagonism How Public Goods Are Promoted

One of the most continually vexing problems in society is the variability with which citizens support endeavors that are designed to help a great number of people. In this article, we examine the twin roles of cooperative and antagonistic behavior in this variability. We find that each plays an important role, though their contributions are, understandably, at odds. It is this opposition that produces seeming unpredictability in citizen response to collective need. In fact, we suggest that careful consideration of the research allows one to often predict when efforts to provide a collectively beneficial good will succeed and when they will fail. To understand the dynamics of participation in response to collective need, it is necessary to distinguish between the primary types of need situations. A public good is an entity that relies in whole or in part on contributions to be provided. Examples of public goods are charities and public broadcasting. Public goods require that citizens experience a short-term loss (of their contribution) in order to realize a long-term gain (of the good). However, because everyone can use the good once it is provided, there is also an incentive to not contribute, let others give, and then take advantage of their efforts. This state of affairs introduces a conflict between doing what is best for oneself and what is best for the group. In a public goods situation, cooperation and antagonism impact how one resolves this conflict. The other major type of need situation is a common-pool resource problem. Here, a good is fully provided at the outset, and citizens may sample from it. The resource is usually, but not necessarily, partially replenished. Examples of replenished resources are drinking water and trees; examples of resources that are functionally not replenished are oil and minerals. Common-pool resources allow citizens to experience a short-term gain (by getting what they want in the early life of the resource) but also present the possibility of a long-term loss (if the resource dries up). As with public goods, there is thus a conflict between, on the one hand, acting in one’s best interest and taking as much as one wants all the time and, on the other, acting for the good of the group, which requires taking a lesser amount so that the replenishment rate can keep up with the rate of use. As with public goods, both cooperation and antagonism affect this decision. With these situations in mind, we can now dig deeply into the dynamics of both cooperation and antagonism. Cooperation is one of the most heavily studied aspects of human behavior, yet despite this attention, there is much that is not understood about it, including its fundamental base. There are a number of different perspectives on the base. Interdependence theory argues that cooperation is driven by how one interprets the subjective value of the outcomes that will result from various combinations of behaviors. A person who sees a potential result of “50 to you, 50 to me” as “We both would do well” is more likely to cooperate than the person who sees it as “I would not outgain the other person.” Self-control theory suggests that cooperation is a function of how well a person can resist the impulse to benefit now and delay gratification. Evolutionary theory takes many forms but revolves around the extent to which cooperation is adaptive. Finally, the appropriateness framework takes a cognitive approach and assumes that cooperation is determined by a combination of social–cognitive (interpretation of self and the situation) and decision-heuristic factors. We propose that it is possible to integrate across these approaches and understand cooperation as a behavior that is influenced by all of these factors as well as other dynamics, such as cultural mores and personality traits. Antagonism, as it relates to the collective welfare, is a phenomenon with a lesser history but one that is clearly influential. A number of facets of antagonism are relevant. Power, and its abuse, is a major factor, and a specific application to collective goods is the notion of a “gatekeeper,” or a person who can completely determine whether a public good exists or a common-pool resource can be used. Gatekeepers tend to demand ample compensation from others in order for the good or resource to go forward. If this demand is resisted, as it often is, the end result is that the good is not provided or the resource not accessed. Another facet is the desire to see an out-group be harmed. Sometimes, this motivation is so strong that people will deny themselves a good outcome in order to see the harm occur. Why someone would want to see an out-group be harmed is debatable, but it may be attributable to a desire to be seen as a winner, or it may be a strategy designed to produce a net benefit for one’s in-group. Emotions also play a role, with people tending to assume that out-group members have just basic emotions such as happiness and sadness and not secondary emotions such as guilt and shame. Because out-group members are emotionally simple, it is seen as acceptable to treat them badly. Complicating matters even further is that antagonism can sometimes be seen against in-group members who deviate, in either direction, from the group norm and against individuals who are behaving in a clearly selfless manner, like volunteers. A number of approaches have been proposed to the resolution of public goods problems. Structural solutions act to alter the basic dynamic of the dilemma by means of interventions such as rewards for cooperation, punishment for noncooperation, and selection of a single group member to chart a course of action for everyone. Third-party solutions involve the bringing in of an external agent to help determine how group members should behave. These agents may be more passive and merely suggest solutions, or they may be more active and dictate how decisions will be made, what decision will be made, or both. Finally, psychological solutions involve changing how people view the situation. We finish by discussing how policy makers can improve the chances of a publicly valuable good being supported. We particularly emphasize creation of a felt connection with future generations; clear demonstration of immediate and concrete consequences as a result of failure to provide the good; instillation of a sense of community; and isolation of the good from other, related issues. We also take up the general problem of distrust of those who establish policy and discuss some methods for helping minimize distrust.

The Effects of Envy on Reciprocation in a Social Dilemma

This article presents two studies that address Axelrod’s (1984) prescription to not worry about the outcomes that others receive in a mixed-motive situation. The first study demonstrated that people do attend and react to others’ outcomes, with people whose outcomes were of a lesser magnitude than the opponent being uncooperative and people with greater-magnitude outcomes being very cooperative. This was true even though own and other outcomes were linearly equivalent. The second study showed that dispositional envy can predict rate of cooperation and that referent cognitions theory can be applied to help alleviate the impact of differing outcomes, both by making amends for small-magnitude outcomes at the end of the game (amelioration) and by providing a reasonable explanation for why the differences in outcomes exist (justification), although the former intervention was ineffective with people with high levels of dispositional envy. Discussion focuses on the role of mental simulations in the reduction of envy effects.

Group Research Trends in Social and Organizational Psychology: Whatever Happened to Intragroup Research?

We report the results of an archival study of group research published in three organizational psychology journals (Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Academy of Management Journal) from 1975 through 1994 Moreland, Hogg, and Hains (1994), in a review of three social psychology journals (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin), suggested there is an increasing enthusiasm for the social psychological study of groups However, their data indicated that nthusiasm for group research in social psychology may be primarily due to the popularity of one category, intergroup relations We tested the proposal that research traditionally viewed as intragroup (e g, group performance) has been taken up by organizational psychologists Our data support this contention, as the publication pattern for intragroup research topics in the three organizational journals was an inverse of that reported by Moreland et al Results are discussed in terms of historical and interdisciplinary trends within psychology.

The desire to expel unselfish members from the group.

An initial study investigating tolerance of group members who abuse a public good surprisingly showed that unselfish members (those who gave much toward the provision of the good but then used little of the good) were also targets for expulsion from the group. Two follow-up studies replicated this and ruled out explanations grounded in the target being seen as confused or unpredictable. A fourth study suggested that the target is seen by some as establishing an undesirable behavior standard and by others as a rule breaker. Individuals who formed either perception expressed a desire for the unselfish person to be removed from the group. Implications are discussed.

Elements of Reciprocity and Social Value Orientation

This study assessed the impact of social value orientation on the ability of a reciprocal choice strategy to induce high rates of cooperative behavior in a prisoner’s dilemma. Prosocials, competitors, and individualists played against reciprocal strategies for which delay of reciprocation of both cooperation and noncooperation were orthogonally manipulated. As predicted, individualists cooperated most frequently against Tit-for-tat, competitors when retaliation for noncooperation was delayed, and prosocials when their cooperative choice was immediately reciprocated. In addition, it was found that prosocials began “behavioral assimilation” as early as the second of four five-trial blocks and that changes in competitors’ rate of cooperation over time were determined by immediacy of reciprocating cooperation.

Actions of Similar Others as Inducements to Cooperate in Social Dilemmas

Two studies were conducted to determine whether information about the actions of others in a multitrial social dilemma can influence choice behavior. Participants read about three (fictitious) people who supposedly had already participated in the study and who were either similar or dissimilar to a typical college student. Participants then played several trials of a social dilemma game. Study 1, which used a prisoner’s dilemma, showed that participant rates of cooperation conformed to those reported for similar, but not dissimilar, others. Study 2 added outcome information to the person descriptions and changed the game to a public goods dilemma. Cooperation rates were directly influenced by similar others when others’ choices were described as having produced large outcomes; when choices were said to have produced small outcomes, rate of cooperation was inversely related to others’ behavior. As with Study 1, information about dissimilar others had no effect on choice behavior.