Social Dilemmas: From Competition to Cooperation

Social dilemmas are interdependent decisions where the outcomes depend upon choices made by every decision maker. Importantly, the incentive structure sets up a dominant strategy of non-cooperation such that everyone ends up worse off than if all had cooperated, but each individual is better off not cooperating regardless of what others do. Thus, social dilemmas are mixed-motive situations that require a choice between short-term individual gain and long-term collective gain. Social dilemma researchers have adopted a variety of approaches to studying cooperation ranging from considering it as a constructed context-dependent choice that is affected by incentives and economic nudges, group affiliation, norms, and social nudges, while others investigate individual differences and personal perceptions of value. This chapter organizes current topical knowledge through the lens of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), where cooperation is the expressed behavior when an intent to cooperate emerges (consciously or sub-consciously) from a positive attitude towards the act of cooperating, from a dominant cooperative norm, or the interaction of attitude and norms, and is supported by the perception that one has the freedom to cooperate (behave cooperatively). The chapter provides a broad review of the field to understand mechanisms that both increase likelihood of cooperative behavior and those that result in cooperative breakdowns, as well as possible solutions to further effective cooperation.