When Rules Really Make a Difference: The Effect of Cooperation Rules and Self-Sacrificing Leadership on Moral Norms in Social Dilemmas

If self-interested behavior conflicts with the collective welfare, rules of cooperation are often installed to prevent egoistic behavior. We hypothesized that installing such rules may instigate personal moral norms of cooperation, but that they fail in doing so when installed by a leader who is self-interested rather than self-sacrificing. Three studies confirmed this and also showed that, consequently, only self-sacrificing leaders were able to install rules that increase cooperation without the need for a perfectly operating monitoring system.