Social Capital and Polish Students’ Behaviour in Experimental Games Designed to Illustrate Cooperation

Abstract

IntroductionSocial capital in the form of generalised trust and reciprocation is typically seen to be positively correlated with economic growth (Growiec and Growiec, 2014). Poland is often regarded as the most successful of the post-Soviet bloc countries in its transformation from a planned economy to a market economy. However, the level of generalised trust in Poland has been reported to be low, even compared to other post-communist countries (Growiec, 2011). This article is one in a series based on a project designed to elucidate how individuals' social capital relates to their behaviour in social and economic interactions1.This study was carried out at state universities, one in each of the sixteen Polish regions, whose main aim is to study the level of generalised trust and reciprocation among Polish students using experimental game theory alongside a questionnaire.The first article (Markowska-Przybyia and Ramsey, 2014) presented the games that the students played: the Ultimatum Game (Guth et al., 1982), the Trust Game (Berg et al., 1995) and the Public Goods Game (Isaac and Walker, 1988) and how these games were played in our experimental setting. The second article (Markowska-Przybyia and Ramsey, 2015) presented the results of the questionnaire. This article considers results from the Ultimatum Game and the Public Goods Game.Although many large scale studies using experimental game theory have been carried out in various countries, this is the first such study to be carried out in Poland (see G%siorowska et al., 2012 and G%siorowska and Helka, 2012 for descriptions of smaller scale studies in Poland).This paper investigates the relation of the behaviour observed in the Ultimatum Game and Public Goods Game with the answers to two questions related to the type of strategy that students regarded as being the most likely to result in success (henceforth referred to as the strategy questions). The article also gives a description (sociological and statistical) of the differences between students according to the answers given to these two questions. These questions look at two dimensions which are elements of any strategy aimed at economic success and how likely a student is to follow the type of strategy which is seen to most often bring success. One of these dimensions is referred to as the social dimension with cooperation at one end of this spectrum and individualism at the other end. The other dimension is the legal dimension with adherence to the law on one end of this spectrum and behaviour on the boundary of the law at the other end. Although the majority of students are proponents of cooperative behaviour, our results indicate that those who are proponents of individualistic behaviour do not feel any discord between their own views and the views of society as a whole. On the other hand, those who see behaviour on the boundary of the law as being the most likely to bring success very often feel discord, regardless of whether they see cooperative or individualistic behaviour as being the most likely to bring success. Those who stated that individualistic behaviour on the edge of the law was most likely to bring success statistically showed the most characteristic behaviour in these two games. They exhibited a low level of cooperative behaviour in both of the games considered. Those who stated individualistic behaviour in adherence with the law showed a low level of cooperation in the Public Goods Game (where there is no possibility of negative reciprocation), whereas they showed a high level of cooperative behaviour in the Ultimatum Game (where negative reciprocation is possible). This indicates that this group of individuals will act individualistically when possible, but in clear social interactions they accept and act upon informal norms. The relation between the answers to these two questions and students' social capital is also addressed.Section 1 describes the questionnaire and how the experiment was conducted. …