Seriousness of Social Dilemmas and the Provision of a Sanctioning System

Two types of cooperation can be distinguished in social dilemmas. Elementary cooperation occurs when members cooperate for the benefit of the collectivity. Instrumental cooperation occurs when members cooperate to introduce a change in the incentive structure (such as the provision of a sanctioning system) so as to eliminate the dilemma from the original situation. The results of a social dilemma experiment, using 48 same-sex four-person groups, indicate that (a) in the absence of a sanctioning system, greater temptation to defect makes the subjects cooperate less fully, whereas (b) when opportunities to cooperate in a sanctioning system exist, greater temptation to defect in the original dilemma makes the subjects cooperate more fully for the provision or maintenance of the sanctioning system when the gain for cooperation is large. The implication of these findings is that as the social dilemma becomes more serious, people become more willing to cooperate in providing a change in the system which addresses the dilemma problem.

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