Thinking and Deciding

468 SOCIAL DILEMMAS: COOPERATION VERSUS DEFECTION
tocol restricting chlorofluorocarbon production has removed much of the threat of
ozone depletion. International treaties on trade and the protection of fisheries have
been somewhat effective. Many nations have substantially reduced pollution within
their borders; others have instituted market reforms to improve their standard of living.
But these innovations are social reforms resulting from changes in law, not
the result of spontaneous cooperation. The production of reforms may be seen as a
second-order social dilemma, formally like that studied by Yamagishi, but on a much
larger scale.
Elster (1989b) has suggested that reforms result through a kind of sequence of
actions inspired by different kinds of social norms. The first to act are the “everyday
Kantians,” idealists who behave as though they accepted the cooperative theory
described earlier in this chapter: Vegetarians who object to meat eating on moral
grounds; environmentalists who try to adopt a sustainable lifestyle, despite an economy
not designed for it; and so on. Despite the low probability of success and the
small immediate benefits, such behavior may be justifiable in utilitarian terms if the
long-term benefit of success is sufficiently high. This sort of high benefit may involve
recruitment of additional followers, enough to bring about major reform. Elster suggests
that such converts might consist of what we might call “everyday utilitarians,”
those who will join and support a social movement once it is clear that their action
can make a difference. Finally, there are those who will cooperate in a social movement
when enough others are cooperating, those motivated by what we have called
fear, or concern for fairness.
Of course, the path to reform is never smooth, nor assured. Reforms are resisted
by those who will lose in order that others may gain. Moreover, as we discussed in
the last chapter, other people will object to reforms if the benefits are seen as unfairly
distributed, and some will object on principle to the idea of hurting some in order to
help others. Other objections to reform (Baron and Jurney, 1993) are expressed in
terms of rights violations, that is, removing choices that people think they should be
allowed to make freely — such as buying and selling slaves, fishing in traditional
fisheries, having children, or refusing medical treatment (such as vaccinations, even
when herd immunity is affected).
Conclusion
Defection in social dilemmas may arise for many reasons, depending on the type of
dilemma. People may, for example, believe that selfishness is a virtue (Miller, 1999).
Or they may think that others are defecting and use this belief to justify defection
even when the benefit/cost ratio of their cooperation is no lower than if others were
cooperating.
We can encourage cooperation to some extent by moral exhortation. For example,
the tendency to ignore the effects of choices on others can be opposed by
the simpler heuristic — which we try to drum into children’s heads almost daily —
“Think about other people’s feelings.” We can remind ourselves that our choices