Asymmetric Social Dilemmas Research Articles

Efficiency and resilience of cooperation in asymmetric social dilemmas

Direct reciprocity is a powerful mechanism for cooperation in social dilemmas. The very logic of reciprocity, however, seems to require that individuals are symmetric, and that everyone has the same means to influence each others' payoffs. Yet in many applications, individuals are asymmetric. Herein, we study the effect of asymmetry in linear public good games. Individuals may differ in their endowments (their ability to contribute to a public good) and in their productivities (how effective their contributions are). Given the individuals' productivities, we ask which allocation of endowments is optimal for cooperation. To this end, we consider two notions of optimality. The first notion focuses on the resilience of cooperation. The respective endowment distribution ensures that full cooperation is feasible even under the most adverse conditions. The second notion focuses on efficiency. The corresponding endowment distribution maximizes group welfare. Using analytical methods, we fully characterize these two endowment distributions. This analysis reveals that both optimality notions favor some endowment inequality: More productive players ought to get higher endowments. Yet the two notions disagree on how unequal endowments are supposed to be. A focus on resilience results in less inequality. With additional simulations, we show that the optimal endowment allocation needs to account for both the resilience and the efficiency of cooperation.

Social Interaction Patterns of the Disabled People in Asymmetric Social Dilemmas.

The social participation of the disabled people is unsatisfactory and low, one of the reasons often overlooked but of great importance may lie in the disparate patterns of social interaction between the disabled people and the abled people. The current study respectively recruited 41 and 80 disabled people in two experiments and adopted give-some games and public good dilemma to explore social interaction patterns between the disabled abled people. The results were as follows: (1) the disabled people preferred to interact with the disabled people and the abled people preferred to interact with the abled people. (2) The disabled abled people had higher cooperation, satisfaction and sense of justice when interacting with the disabled people than interacting with the abled people. (3) Advantage in the number of the disabled people could reverse their disadvantage in the identity. These results are of important practical value, which provides related theoretical support for the disabled people’s federation and communities when carrying out activities for the disabled people.

Spontaneous Giving under Structural Inequality: Intuition Promotes Cooperation in Asymmetric Social Dilemmas.

The present research investigates the role of intuitive mental processing on cooperation in experimental games involving structural inequality. Results from an experiment using conceptual priming to induce intuitive mental processing provide the first evidence that cooperation is promoted by intuition in an asymmetric context that distributes the gains from cooperation unequally among a group. Therefore, the results extend our understanding of the cognitive underpinnings of human cooperation by demonstrating the robustness of intuitive cooperation in games involving structural inequality regarding asymmetric gains from cooperation. Additionally, the results provide the first successful conceptual replication of the intuition-cooperation link using conceptual priming, therefore also contributing to the debate about the validity of previous research in other contexts. Taken together, the present research contributes to the literature on psychological and institutional mechanisms that promote cooperation.

Decision Making in Asymmetric Social Dilemmas: A Dual Mode of Action

Interdependence structure and asymmetric relation in social dilemmas come together to cultivate two different but stable modes of social perception. Consequently, individuals behave in two different ways: a vertical mode of action oriented to strength and hierarchy, and a horizontal mode oriented to morality and harmony. When facing asymmetric social dilemmas, those who are relatively strong in their social position are inclined to behave in a vertical mode and thus decide to defect; while those who are relatively weak tend to act in a horizontal mode and thus decide to cooperate. However, individuals' motives strongly moderate the relationship between asymmetric social structure and decision making in social dilemmas. This view explains well the experimental research done by the authors; however it still needs further development and additional tests.

Evolution of Reciprocity in Asymmetric International Environmental Negotiations

We study the success of generalised trigger strategies in the evolution of cooperation in international environmental negotiations where the performance of these strategies is derived from asymmetric \(n\)-player prisoners’ dilemmas. Our results suggest that there exist regions in the relevant parameter space—i.e. costs and benefits, low and high tit-for-tat thresholds, probability of continued interaction—such that (partial) cooperation may emerge as long-run attractor of the evolutionary dynamics in these asymmetric social dilemmas.

Tactful calling: investigating asymmetric social dilemmas in mobile communications

Recipients of phone calls face a constant dilemma between ignoring calls at the possible expense of offending the caller, missing business opportunities or neglecting family members on one hand; and answering them at the expense of interrupting their train of thought or appearing rude and impolite towards others with whom they share a social activity on the other hand. We studied people's attitudes regarding these dilemmas, with emphasis on their social aspects. In a cross-cultural study, conducted in Israel and in Germany, we surveyed both caller and recipient attitudes towards answering mobile phone calls in various circumstances. The study also assessed the aspects of providing contextual information about a call prior to it being answered, including types of information deemed most valuable. The results emphasise the importance of social norms in affecting respondents’ attitudes towards making or accepting phone calls regardless of role (caller or recipient), gender or culture. We also found that the norms in the physical context (e.g. being in a meeting) prevailed over norms in the virtual context (e.g. the phone call). Cultural and gender differences did not affect the degree to which people were frustrated by insufficient information regarding the other party's context. However, these factors did affect the suggested design solutions to this problem. The research provides insight into the social aspects of the problem of interruptive mobile phone calls and towards designing applications that help users maintain politeness while handling the caller–recipient dilemma.

Spontaneous Giving Under Structural Inequality: Intuition Promotes Cooperation in Asymmetric Social Dilemmas

The present research investigates the role of intuitive mental processing on cooperation in experimental games involving structural inequality. Results from an experiment using conceptual priming to induce intuitive mental processing provide the first evidence that cooperation is promoted by intuition in an asymmetric context that distributes the gains from cooperation unequally among a group. Therefore, the results extend our understanding of the cognitive underpinnings of human cooperation by demonstrating the robustness of intuitive cooperation in games involving structural inequality regarding asymmetric gains from cooperation. Additionally, the results provide the first successful conceptual replication of the highly discussed results presented in Rand et al. (2012), therefore also contributing to the debate about the replicability of existing research on the intuition-cooperation link (e.g., Rand et al., 2012, Tinhog et al., 2013). Thus, the present research contributes to an intensive debate about whether intuition does or does not promote cooperation and how psychological research replicates across settings and laboratories in general.

Provision versus Appropriation in Symmetric and Asymmetric Social Dilemmas

Social dilemmas characterize decision environments in which individuals' exclusive pursuit of their own material self‐interest can produce inefficient allocations. Social dilemmas are most commonly studied in provision games, such as public goods games and trust games, in which the social dilemma can be manifested in foregone opportunities to create surplus. Appropriation games are sometimes used to study social dilemmas that can be manifested in destruction of surplus, as is typical in common‐pool resource extraction games. A central question is whether social dilemmas are more serious for inhibiting creation of surplus or in promoting its destruction. This question is addressed in this study with an experiment involving three pairs of payoff‐equivalent provision and appropriation games. Some game pairs are symmetric, whereas others involve asymmetric power relationships. We find that play of symmetric provision and appropriation games produces comparable efficiency. In contrast, power asymmetry leads to significantly lower efficiency in an appropriation game than in a payoff‐equivalent provision game. This outcome can be rationalized by reciprocal preference theory but not by models of unconditional social preferences.

Social Value Orientation and Cooperation in Asymmetric Social Dilemmas

The effect of social value orientation on cooperative behavior in social dilemmas has been widely examined in social psychology research.However,only a small to medium effect size has been found.According to the appropriateness model(Weber,Kopelman, Messick,2004),decision making in social dilemmas can be shaped by one's identity,situational recognition,and the application of rules.Thus,individual characteristics interacting with situational factors affect decision making in social dilemmas.Therefore,the unequal resources with which individuals are endowed in asymmetric social dilemmas set up differences in endowment dominance and serve as contextual cues that may shape cooperative behavior differently for prosocials and proselfs.This study hypothesized that prosocials would be sensitive to difference in endowment dominance whereas proselfs would be immune to the difference(H1) and that,compared to proselfs,prosocials would exhibit a higher level of cooperation when they were endowed with less or when their endowments were worth less(H2).The current study examined the above hypotheses via two experiments.In Experiment 1,participants were randomly assigned to an advantaged condition or a disadvantaged condition.Their social value orientation was measured with a nine-item decomposed game instrument.90 participants interacted in a fictional two-person prisoner's dilemma situation.The main results showed that 1) prosocials allocated more tokens to their partner when their endowments were worth less than when their endowments were worth more;and 2) prosocials allocated more to their partner than did proselfs when their endowments were worth less.Experiment 2 was conducted in a fictional 4-person public good dilemma situation.191 participants were randomly assigned to an equal condition,an advantaged condition or a disadvantaged condition.Again,their social value orientations were also measured.The main results showed that 1) the amount of their endowments that prosocials contributed in the disadvantaged condition was significantly higher than the average amount of endowments that they contributed in the equal condition and in the advantaged condition;and 2) prosocials contributed more to the group account than did proselfs only when they were endowed with less.This was not the case in either the equal condition or the advantaged condition.The results from both experiments supported our hypotheses and indicated that the effect of social value orientation on cooperation was moderated by dominance differences stemming from the initial resources that individuals were endowed.The results enrich our understanding on how prosocials and proselfs differ in their response to different distributions of initial resources.It also suggests that such social value orientation effects are still open for exploration.Future research should further explore how prosocials and proselfs behave differently when they face social dilemmas with different situational characteristics.

Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself: Fear of Fear, Fear of Greed and Gender Effects in Two-Person Asymmetric Social Dilemmas

This article extends Simpson's (2003) research on sex differences in social dilemmas. To test the hypotheses that men defect in response to greed and women to fear, Simpson created Fear and Greed Dilemmas, but experiments using these games supported the greed hypothesis only. In this article I focus on why the fear hypothesis failed and suggest that fear was actually absent in the Fear Dilemma. To retest Simpson's hypotheses, I propose a new asymmetric game, the Fear-of-Greed Dilemma. The asymmetry is important for two reasons. First, it creates the risk of exploitation that Simpsons Fear Dilemma lacked. Second, it exposes a critical limitation in Rapoport's (1964) K-index and suggests a re-specification. Laboratory studies supported the fear hypothesis and found mediating effects of expectations about partners on sex differences in cooperation.

Cognitions and behavior in asymmetric social dilemmas: a comparison of two cultures.

This study investigated whether cognitions and behavior in an asymmetric social dilemma can be predicted by national culture. Results indicated that, as predicted, groups of decision makers from Japan--a collectivist, hierarchical culture-were more cooperative, expected others to be more cooperative, and were more likely to adopt an equal allocation distribution rule to resolve the dilemma than were groups of decision makers from the United States-an individualist, egalitarian culture. An opportunity for communication had a greater impact on expectations of others' behavior in groups of U.S. decision makers than in groups of Japanese decision makers.

Cognitions and behavior in asymmetric social dilemmas: A comparison of two cultures.

Cognitions and behavior in asymmetric social dilemmas: A comparison of two cultures.

Cooperation in Asymmetric Social Dilemmas When Equality Is Perceived as Unfair1

Three experiments examined the hypothesis that in an asymmetric social dilemma, perceived fairness of the distribution promotes cooperation. In support of the hypothesis, Studies 1 and 2 showed that willingness to voluntarily and anonymously pay for child care was related to ratings of perceived fairness of equal and equitable distributions of the quality of child care when it was a public good (provided by the municipality) or a market good (provided by a private business). Study 1 also showed that an equal distribution of the public good was perceived to be fairer than an equal distribution of the market good, whereas the reverse was true for an equitable distribution. Study 2 showed that when quality differences were explicit, an equitable distribution was perceived as fairer than an equal distribution. Study 3 showed that an equitable distribution of quantity of child care was perceived to be fairer and increased willingness to pay as compared to an equal distribution.

Egocentric Interpretations of Fairness in Asymmetric, Environmental Social Dilemmas: Explaining Harvesting Behavior and the Role of Communication

This research explores the effects of egocentric interpretations of fairness, expectations about other actors’ harvesting decisions, and communication on the focal actor's harvesting decisions in asymmetric social dilemmas. We found support for the predictions that egocentrism exists in perceptions of fairness in asymmetric dilemmas, overharvesting is positively related to the amount of egocentrism, and egocentrism is stronger before discussion than after discussion. Furthermore, in a comparison between asymmetric and symmetric dilemmas, we found that egocentrism and overharvesting were greater in asymmetric dilemmas than in symmetric dilemmas. Finally, the results indicate that among certain actors, overharvesting in asymmetric dilemmas is positively related to the amount of harvesting expected from the other parties. This study contributes to the social dilemma literature by (1) introducing the idea of egocentric interpretations of fairness as an explanation for overharvesting behavior, (2) demonstrating that egocentrism is more pronounced in asymmetric versus symmetric dilemmas, (3) suggesting that the reduction of egocentric interpretations of fairness is another reason why communication enhances cooperative behavior, and (4) demonstrating that beliefs about what others will do is related to harvesting decisions in asymmetric as well as symmetric dilemmas.

Coordination Rules in Asymmetric Social Dilemmas: A Comparison between Public Good Dilemmas and Resource Dilemmas

The present study focuses on differences between Public Good Dilemmas and Resource Dilemmas. As members of a four-person group, subjects either played a one-trial Public Good Dilemma or a one-trial Resource Dilemma. In the Public Good Dilemma, members learned that they were endowed with a certain number of points and that they could obtain a bonus if as a group they could take more than 120 points. In the Resource Dilemma, members learned that they could take points from a certain source and that they could obtain a bonus if they would leave more than 120 points in this source. In experiments 1 and 2, asymmetry of endowments was induced: In the Public Good Dilemma, two members could give twice as many points as the other two, whereas in the Resource Dilemma, two members could take twice as many points as the other two. In experiment 3, asymmetry of interests was induced: All members could give/take an equal number of points, but two members would receive 33% of the bonus whereas the other two would receive 17%. The results of these experiments show that group members tend to coordinate their choice behavior differently in these two dilemma situations. Members playing a Public Good Dilemma tend to give in proportion to their endowments or interest position. Members playing a Resource Dilemma coordinate choice behavior in a way that minimizes differences in final outcomes.