Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Rules regulate society as they help to predict social interactions. Groups, however, do not always abide by rules. Instead, they break them when the conditions are right. Here we hypothesized that...Show moreRules regulate society as they help to predict social interactions. Groups, however, do not always abide by rules. Instead, they break them when the conditions are right. Here we hypothesized that rule abidance behavior is determined by a) an individual choosing another for mutual benefit based on their reputation and b) the social-environmental incentives like fairness and dishonesty. We had three participants building a reputation for their willingness to abide by or break rules. A fourth participant used that information to choose one to three participants, then played several rounds of a dictator game and a die-roll task. Participants were chosen more often when their reputation was in line with environmental incentives, where merely transitioning from one environment to another strengthened that effect. Regulators should therefore ensure the consistency and kinds of environmental incentives that individuals in power positions face across environments for controlling resulting rule abidance behavior.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
closed access
Humans regularly face collective problems calling for cooperation. To solve such problems, people can establish public goods that require contributions from individual members and benefit the whole...Show moreHumans regularly face collective problems calling for cooperation. To solve such problems, people can establish public goods that require contributions from individual members and benefit the whole group, e.g. public health care and infrastructure. It has been suggested that in modern society people have become less dependent on the creation of public goods and more able to solve problems individually (Santos, Varnum, & Grossmann, 2017). Nevertheless, solving shared problems individually is tied to resources that are often unequally distributed between people. Inequality (Zelmer, 2003) and individualism (Gross & De Dreu, 2019) can complicate cooperation, however, their interplay is largely unknown. We confronted 50 groups (N = 200) with a public goods game with the additional option to solve a shared problem individually through a private solution. Across groups, group members had either an equal or an unequal resource distribution. The private solution allowed wealthier group members to leave the group and avoid contributing to the public good. This resulted in increased inequality. Specifically, the easier it was to opt for a private solution, the higher the inequality was. We further investigated voting preferences and fairness perceptions by having sixty-one impartial raters complete the task from a third-party perspective. The third-party players preferred a more equitable solution that would result in lower inequality. While group members dependent on the public solution voted for delegating allocation decisions to the third party, the wealthier, and thus, more independent members voted against it revealing self-serving motives. Our findings highlight unique problems emerging with self-reliance in the face of global issues, such as a pandemic and global warming, that require cooperation. Especially, when self-reliance is only affordable for some, collective action can fail and further increase wealth gaps.Show less
