Abstract
Social dilemmas force players to balance between personal and collective gain. In many dilemmas, such as elected governments negotiating climate-change mitigation measures, the decisions are made not by individual players but by their representatives. However, the behaviour of representatives in social dilemmas has not been investigated experimentally. Here inspired by the negotiations for greenhouse-gas emissions reductions, we experimentally study a collective-risk social dilemma that involves representatives deciding on behalf of their fellow group members. Representatives can be re-elected or voted out after each consecutive collective-risk game. Selfish players are preferentially elected and are hence found most frequently in the ‘representatives' treatment. Across all treatments, we identify the selfish players as extortioners. As predicted by our mathematical model, their steadfast strategies enforce cooperation from fair players who finally compensate almost completely the deficit caused by the extortionate co-players. Everybody gains, but the extortionate representatives and their groups gain the most.
Highlights
Social dilemmas force players to balance between personal and collective gain
We develop a mathematical model and confirm its prediction that the extortioners’ steadfast strategies enforce cooperation from fair players who compensate almost completely the deficit caused by the extortionate co-players
Because only fair players raise their contributions over the three games but not selfish players, these results suggest that a considerable fraction of fair players learn to become even more cooperative in response to extortioners
Summary
Social dilemmas force players to balance between personal and collective gain. In many dilemmas, such as elected governments negotiating climate-change mitigation measures, the decisions are made not by individual players but by their representatives. Inspired by the negotiations for greenhouse-gas emissions reductions, we experimentally study a collective-risk social dilemma that involves representatives deciding on behalf of their fellow group members. Humans are regarded as champions of cooperation[1,2], there are social dilemmas that so far have defied solution—we have not yet collaborated successfully to stop the increase of global greenhouse-gas emissions[3,4], Europe continues to overexploit its marine fish stock[5] and the European Union has so far failed to reach an equitable solution to accommodating the large number of refugees arriving from Africa and the Middle East[6] In these and other dilemmas, essential decisions are made not by individual social actors but by representatives such as officials from elected governments. The target sum that must be collected by each group to prevent simulated dangerous climate change is h120 in the 6-players treatment and h360 both in the 18-players and the 6-representatives treatments
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