Thinking and Deciding

466 SOCIAL DILEMMAS: COOPERATION VERSUS DEFECTION
the next play of the game. Subjects were more likely to say yes when the pool had
run out quickly because units were taken out faster than they could be replenished.
Culture
Of greater interest here is the response to the perceived variability among the other
players. The researchers ran the experiment in both the United States (Santa Barbara)
and the Netherlands (Groningen), and they found that subjects’ behavior apparently
was affected by their nationality. When the amounts taken by other subjects differed
by large amounts, American subjects tended to take more for themselves. It seemed
that they did not want to be “suckers.” “If some pig is going to lead the whole gang to
ruin, well, I might as well share in the spoils,” they seemed to reason. Dutch subjects
responded differently. In the same situations, they were not more likely to increase
their own harvests. When asked if they wanted to elect a leader to apportion the pool
on the next play of the game, American subjects were equally likely to want a leader,
regardless of whether they saw the other subjects as highly variable in their demands
or not. Dutch subjects were considerably more likely to want a leader when the other
subjects’ demands were variable than when they were all about the same.
In short, Americans tended to respond to unfairness by joining in, by avoiding
being “suckers.” Dutch subjects responded to unfairness by trying to eliminate it
through electing a leader. This study reminds us that the manner in which people
weigh moral and social considerations is very often a function of the manner in
which they are brought up and educated and of the culture in which they live. The
Dutch subjects may have tended to regard large differences among the other subjects
as morally outrageous. The Americans seemed to regard such differences as a sign
that self-indulgence was acceptable.
Group discussion
The election of a leader is not the only way to solve a social dilemma, and it is
possible that Americans may have seen this idea as unnecessarily authoritarian. The
parties can simply make an agreement among themselves to abide by certain rules.
In a laboratory task, this often occurs when the participants talk among themselves
about the situation. Dawes, McTavish, and Shaklee (1977) found that simply giving
the subjects a chance to talk about a laboratory dilemma — in which each subject
could choose to cooperate or defect — increased cooperation from about 30% to
about 70% of responses. (Mere social contact had no effect: When the subjects spent
the time discussing another issue, cooperation did not increase.) In such discussion,
there is an implicit threat; subjects made it clear to one another that they would each
be very angry with anyone who defected (possibly to the point of retaliating outside
of the experiment). It is doubtful that this solution could be used in large-scale social
dilemmas, because they involve too many people to sit down and talk, but television
publicity campaigns for various causes sometimes use a related method. Respected
(or ordinary) citizens appear on television and proclaim their intention to perform