Cooperation is Essential for the Well-Being of a Social Group
The idea of cooperation among people is important to consider since humans cannot help but be part of social groups and larger societies. Cooperation takes place when multiple people focus on achieving a result that will come to benefit everyone in that social group. Social value orientation aids in defining how much more or less a person is willing to share resources with another or a group of people.
The three categories of social value orientation are individualistic orientation, competitive orientation, and cooperative orientation. Individualistic value orientation results in a focus on one’s benefits, competitive value orientation focuses on one’s benefits while minimizing the benefits of others, and cooperative value orientation focuses on benefits for all.
The psychology researchers Jake Moskowitz and Paul Piff state that social value orientation applies to the concept of self-interest vs. cooperation because a person has to decide if they favor their own maximum gain or the maximum gain for all members of a social group.
Those who feel as if they are part of the in-group, rather than feeling excluded or a lone wolf, are more likely to cooperate because they trust other members of the group and believe that everyone is fulfilling their duties as members. The ability to be an active member of a social group, regular communication, and empathy increase the likelihood of cooperation which can benefit most, if not all, people in a society.
Prisoner’s Dilemma
An understanding of the prisoner’s dilemma is important because the principles of this dilemma game make it an effective model for studying social dilemmas. The prisoner’s dilemma is likely to occur in the real world in various ways — the people, the setting, and the subject or object being debated may vary, but only four outcomes are possible, and it may be difficult to be sure of what the other participant will choose. The prisoner’s dilemma does not have to be high-stakes or any life-threatening situation, and it can involve any simple activity or situation that can occur regularly where the options are to cooperate or defect.
For example, if someone buys the last gluten-free, organic, vegan pie at a bakery, which is currently in high demand, and there is another person in line who was hoping to have that last pie, as well, there are four possibilities: both can cooperate by sharing the price and pie, both can defect by fighting over the pie and being forced to leave the bakery, the first person in line can buy the pie for themselves, or the first person can allow the next person to buy the pie for themselves.
Truthfully, complete cooperation is not necessarily of an altruistic nature, and according to the study by Bshary, Zuberbühler, and van Schaik, conflict is normal but can be minimized if a participant of the prisoner’s dilemma benefits through by-product helping since all participants benefit but one may not be aware or may not receive quite as much as the other.
Even if this form of cooperation is self-serving, all members of the group do succeed. The journal article by Blake, Rand, Tingley, and Warneken states that children who have the same partners in a prisoner’s dilemma are more likely to cooperate than defect since reciprocity can be expected — history allows for the development of a relationship. While some people may not personally care about the welfare of others within society, they can still cooperate in order to make decisions that can benefit others, and regular interactions with the same people improve the likelihood of cooperating for the benefit of all.
Relevant Communication
The article by the communication researchers Anisha Shankar and Charles Pavitt shows how relevant communication about a situation, among members of a social group, inspires more cooperation than does rewarding or punishing certain behaviors. Resource and public goods dilemmas are two forms of social dilemmas with common-pool resource where resource dilemmas concentrate on how much to use from the common-pool while public goods dilemmas concentrate on how much members of a group contribute to the common-pool.
Shankar and Pavitt found that promising to cooperate, cooperative social norms, and trust can all be facilitated through verbal interactions, and it may even have an effect on how group members coordinate their choices. The ability to communicate effectively will not only increase the benefits for the members of that social group, but cooperation can expand the amount of resources that can be shared to members of out-groups.
Communication is more efficient than group identity because it forces all of the members of a society to feel compelled to help each other through trust, empathy, and the risk of ruining one’s reputation within the group.
Group identity, alone, is not effective because it can encourage the free rider problem in participating by claiming associating and receiving benefits but not properly using the common-pool resource the way other members would. Shankar and Pavitt have concluded that a lack of communication results in focusing on personal reward vs. societal reward, and uncertainty is more likely to result in the abuse of a common-source resource.
Relevant communication during a social dilemma can reduce inequality because more affluent members are more likely to give more aid while those prone to self-serving behaviors may reconsider focusing on their own benefits in favor of benefits for all within a social group.
Social Dilemmas
Littering and pollution are social dilemmas that affect everyone at a global level. According to the environmentalist, Rinkesh of Conserve Energy Future, littering and pollution can result in environmental damage, fines, and government expense in clean up efforts because people are lazy, uncaring, ignorant, or cheap. A lack of recycling, excessively buying items, and filling bags full of trash — some items that are compostable or still functional and useful — results in landfills that continue to increase in size.
Not only are landfills unattractive and foul-smelling, the accumulation of trash contaminates nearby drinking water sources, which are already limited, but landfills attract wild animals that come into contact with substances and materials that can harm them. Through both accidental and purposeful littering, trash is deposited in rivers and oceans and either floats on top or sinks to the bottom while some items are circulated.
Wild animals tend to consume litter, including the smaller particles of clothing that washing machines expel, and humans, in turn, consume the meat of some of these creatures which means that people are drinking and eating the very waste they intended to remove from their homes.
The individual benefits of littering and pollution are short-term removal of trash from homes, vehicles, and persons’ and the incentive to replace with new or different products and services. The social dilemmas of littering and pollution harm the collective group by contaminating land, water, and living creatures, and choosing to limit how much consumer products and services are created, used, and discarded among natural land and water resources, through cooperation as a society, can result in lessening the damage to all beings throughout the world.
Dark Triad Personality Traits
While cooperation be improved through communication, some individuals will never cooperate even at the possibility of punishment. The Dark Triad traits, which include narcissism, psychopathic tendencies, and Machiavellianism, can influence how likely someone is to defect during the prisoner’s dilemma or any social dilemma.
According to Paul Deutchman and Jessica Sullivan, the selfishness, manipulation, and lack of empathy that are common among people with these personality traits is what causes people to exploit others during social dilemmas — particularly in public goods dilemmas. This is most likely to occur with Machiavellianism since personal reward is a key motivator. Some people with a personality disorder, or individuals that come from a different social group where those with individualistic and self-serving behaviors may not see the purpose in cooperation, would rather risk not receiving any benefits from the group.
On the other hand, the majority of people do not have Dark Traits personality traits, and the same analysis by Paul Deutchman and Jessica Sullivan reveals that even individuals with Machiavellianism, the most manipulative of the three traits, are less likely to defect in public goods dilemmas especially when everyone else in the social group is aware of the amounts contributed. Those with Machiavellianism would not want to reduce self-maximization by ruining their reputations and reciprocal relationships.
Positive pseudo-reciprocity is cooperation that involves investing in decision that will eventually result in rewards for the investor — it is still a self-serving act, but no one loses. These facts, paralleling with the research of Bshary, Zuberbühler, and van Schaik, show that both by-product helping and positive pseudo-reciprocity can continue to aid all of the other members of the social group.
Narcissists, psychopaths, and those with Machiavellian behaviors may not care about a single person’s well-being, other than their own, and just as they are accustomed to manipulating others, they can be manipulated into performing cooperative and altruistic acts.
The Importance of Cooperation
Cooperation is not just a skill, but it can be the means to social, economic, and physical survival. The ability to get along also creates social bonds with other members of a society, and this can result in emotional gain, as well. Rather than ignoring some participants of a social dilemma, cooperation can increase altruistic behaviors which can benefit everyone in the social group, and it may even result in benefits for members of out-groups.
The prisoner’s dilemma occurs regularly, and with practice and less defects, individuals become accustomed to helping each other which improves the lives of everyone within the group because they will feel included through association and trust. That is why cooperation should be a mandatory skill that is taught from an early age because, as revealed in the experiment by Blake, Rand, Tingley, and Warneken, children willingly choose mutual benefits when they are placed in situations with the same participants on a regular basis. Group identity is not enough, and relevant communication is what encourages people of all ages to consider the welfare of others.
Littering and pollution are only a few examples of social dilemmas, but they are damaging to every social group, and it is something that can be minimized through cooperation of a larger scale.
Even the individuals with self-serving ideals, such as those with Dark Triad personality traits, manage to cooperate as much as children which demonstrates that any social dilemma and conflict can be prevented or reduced. Many can receive benefits through the skill of cooperation.
