Thinking and Deciding

452 SOCIAL DILEMMAS: COOPERATION VERSUS DEFECTION
rural areas around Ithaca it is common for farmers to put some fresh produce on a
table by the road. There is a cash box on the table, and customers are expected to
put money in the box in return for the vegetables they take. The box has just a small
slit, so that no one can (easily) make off with the money. We think that the farmers
who use this system have just about the right model of human nature. They feel that
enough people will volunteer to pay for the fresh corn to make it worthwhile to put
it out there. The farmers also know that if it were easy enough to take the money,
someone would do so.”
Competition
In the last chapter, we examined the “fixed-pie assumption” that can hinder integrative
bargaining. Each party assumes that his own gain is coupled with the other
party’s loss. Gains from integrative bargaining are in some ways like gains from
cooperation (except that, in bargaining, there is no particular advantage in defection
if the other party also defects). More generally, we may sometimes evaluate our
own outcomes by comparing them to those of others. Messick (1985, p. 93) tells an
anecdote that illustrates this nicely:
I did an informal experiment with my sons to illustrate this point .... In
isolation from each other, I gave them a choice between a dish containing
two peanuts and one containing three. With no hesitation, they both
chose the three peanuts. The next step was to put one peanut next to the
dish containing two, and four peanuts next to the dish containing three.
I then asked the boys again to tell me which dish they preferred, with
the additional stipulation that the peanuts beside the dish that they chose
would be given to their brother: if they chose three, the brother got four;
if they chose two, the brother got one.
Needless to say, making their outcomes interdependent changed the
choice situation dramatically. The younger boy chose the dish with two
peanuts and explained that he did not want his brother to get four when
he would only get three. The older boy still chose the dish with three but
explained that he did not mind giving his brother four peanuts because
hewassurethathewould ...beabletogetsomeback for himself. He
too was not indifferent to relative position.
Of course, competition will prevent cooperation in social dilemmas as elsewhere. It
is a motive that is useful only in games. We should not confuse these with real life
— either way.
Fairness, equality, and envy
As we noted in the last chapter, people want fair outcomes. This applies to contributions
as well as benefits. In simple situations, such as laboratory experiments,