Personality Difference and Strong-Strong Coalition—Experimental Research Based on Punishment Mechanism

Abstract

Research on social value orientation divides rational people into three categories: individualist, pro-social, and competitor. This kind of research does not focus on network structure. Network exchange theory emphasizes that power comes from an exclusive structure, but it ignores the personality characteristics of people. This paper combines these two studies to explore how punishment mechanisms affect individual coalition strategies in an exclusive structure. The experimental results prove that: (1) when the strong is not in the coalition, there is no significant difference in the benefits of the strong power individualist person and the strong power pro-social person; (2) when two people with different social value orientations are strong-strong coalition, the two will form a “betrayal chain” whose benefit is close to the equilibrium value of the “compromise chain”. The strong power individualists are more likely to “betray” and “take advantage” more than the strong power pro-socialists; (3) the intensity of punishment is inversely related to the frequency of “betrayer”. Analysis of the dialogue data revealed that (4) the strong will properly take care of the weak, and the weak will “approach” the strong; (5) heavy punishment will have a deterrent effect, allowing the actors, especially pro-social to internalize the “punishment mechanism”. This study incorporates both personality and structure into the model, and such studies can explain many power phenomena.