Thinking and Deciding

MOTIVES IN SOCIAL DILEMMAS 449
efficiently and wholeheartedly, without begrudging their efforts. Also, utilitarianism
is a normative standard that concerns the morality we endorse and try to follow. The
closer to this standard, the better, even if we are not very close. Finally, as I suggested
in Chapter 16, we can apply utilitarianism to choices that assume a limitation on selfsacrifice.
Some have proposed that the ideal theory is weighted utilitarianism, a consistent
compromise between self-interest and utilitarianism, weighing self-interest more
than others’ interest by a constant factor in all situations, so as to do the most good for
others given a constant amount of self-sacrifice (Baron 1986; Bennett, 1981, p. 78;
Hare, 1981, ch. 11). This may work as a prescriptive theory, but, even for that purpose,
it would seem better to take into account the fact that people are much more
willing to sacrifice for some people (such as their children) than others, so a more
efficient prescriptive system would be one that takes such relationships into account,
as well as possible limits on altruism (as mentioned in the last paragraph).
But utilitarianism is being proposed as a normative standard, not a prescriptive
rule. If we adopted weighted utilitarianism as a prescriptive standard and suddenly
discovered a way to increase utility (goal achievement) by increasing the weight
given to others’ utilities, we would all have reason to endorse adoption of that new
standard, as long as the weight for each other person was no higher than the weight
for self. So utilitarianism is still the normative standard, even if we must take human
nature into account in applying it to real life.
If we accept utilitarianism as a normative standard for social dilemmas, then we
will also want to replace Dawes’s definition of social dilemmas with one (based on
Pruitt, 1967) in which a social dilemma is a situation in which two or more people
are each faced with essentially the same two options, one maximizing total utility
over all involved, the other maximizing utility for each individual decision maker.
Defined in this way, the idea of social dilemmas seems to capture many of the
kinds of conflicts that we call “moral,” particularly those cases in which self-interest
conflicts with the interests of others and in which many people face the same choice.
An appropriate normative theory for social dilemmas would seem to require cooperation
when cooperation can accomplish some net good. A prescriptive theory for
moral educators might take into account the differences from one situation to another
in people’s willingness to cooperate. It may be too costly to promote cooperation in
some situations.
Motives in social dilemmas
With this analysis in mind, let us examine some of the descriptive theory concerning
the motives for behavior in social dilemmas that has been developed through psychological
research. (Such motives, we shall note later, are not the only cause of
defection: Simple thoughtlessness about the needs of others can play a role.) Let us
begin with the motives or goals that operate in such situations. These motives can be
treated as “dimensions” of utility in a MAUT analysis. If you imagine yourself in a