Psychology 2100: Introduction to Social Psychology

Warren Thorngate, Professor
Psychology Department, Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6
Canada
e-mail = warren_thorngate@carleton.ca

copyright 1999-2006 by Warren Thorngate, all rights reserved

Lecture 8: Social Motives and Interdependence 

What is Social Interdependence?

• What we do affects the life of others
• What others do affects our life
• A topic of intense study by social psychologists under the titles of:
• social exchange theory
• equity theory
• social traps
• social motives
• Games. Based on the idea that when we inter-act, we deliver rewards and punishments, costs and benefits, gains and losses to others as they do to us, and that our subsequent inter-action is shaped by these rewards and punishments. A variant of behaviourism.
• A central question: "What is rewarding and punishing?"
• Another related question: "How do people behave when their own gains result in small losses to many people?"

Class demonstrations:

• Bid for a Dollar 
• Commons Dilemma:try the simulation
• Drive the car or take OC Transpo?
• Sort your trash or not?
• Keep your heat up or down? 
• Pick up your dog poop or sneak away?
• Borrow notes or lend them?

What do these situations have in common?

• What you do affects the outcomes of at least one other person
• The situation that determines the distribution of rewards (the "rules of the game") largely determine your behaviour.

Daniel (1948) and his rats

Each of 24 rats trained separately to

• (1) eat at the food crock

• (2) press bar to turn off electric shock When placed in pairs, will the pairs learn to "cooperate" by alternating their two "roles"?
• Consider what a rat must understand to develop an alternation
• Yet all 12 pairs of rats learned to alternate! By end of their test period (about 20 minutes per day for 10 days) the amount of electricity given had declined to just a few seconds.

Deutsch & Krauss (1960) and their telephone operators

• Tested the notion that in order to get people to cooperate we must "Speak softly, but carry a big stick." If it worked for Daniel's rats, would it also work for humans?
• Asked pairs of telephone operators at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey to play a "Trucking Game"

• Trucking Game Panel

• Game Rules:
• 20 Trials (shipments), 60 cents - # seconds on road at end of each trial
• Long route 56% longer than short route; could expect to lose about 10 cents by going long route

Each operator in 16 pairs began with $4.00

Results:

Average gain when no threat (gate): + $1.02

Average loss when Acme had unilateral threat:

• Acme = - 59 cents
• Bolt = - $1.45 

Average loss when both Acme and Bolt had threat:

• Acme = - $2.03
• Bolt = - $2.34 

Conclusions:

• When people have threats, they use them to block others, even when they hurt their own outcomes
• Alternation (cooperation) not achieved under conditions of threat

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Social Dilemmas

What is a dilemma? A problem that has 2+ solutions, each with at least one good and at least one bad feature. 

The Prisoner's Dilemma Game

• Jointly "rational" decision produces outcomes much worse than jointly "irrational" decision
• Nothing to do with prisoners.

The PDG can take many forms. Here is the most common:

• Two players: Person 1 and Person 2
• Each person has two choices
• They make their choices on a simple matrix or checkerboard
• Person 1 chooses between two rows of the checkerboard
• Person 2 chooses between the two columns of the checkerboard

• Similar to many situations in life:

Returning to the Prisoner's Dilemma…

• How do players play?
• Typical laboratory situation:
• 2 students, strangers
• no communication
• simultaneous choice
• 100 trials
• Typical results:
• A few pairs of students "lock in" on cooperation (A and X choices)
• Most pairs of students "lock in" on non-cooperation (B and Y).
• The average result looks like this:

• What can we do to increase cooperation?
• Manipulate outcomes, for example, increase rewards for cooperation or punishments for noncooperation
• Allow communication between players
• Play for "real" stakes
• Find cooperative people (Youth? Other cultures?)
• Have players conspire against a third disliked player
• Few of these work. Why?

Messick, Thorngate and McClintock studies (late 1960s): decomposed Prisoner's Dilemma -- examples below

Motives that can be distinguished by people's choices:

• Individualism
• Cooperation
• Competition
• Altruism
• Vindictiveness

Some results

• We can change the motive by changing the cues in the situation
• example: changing feedback from own to difference to joint
• changing the definition of the other from friend to stranger to enemy to member of my group
• Motives shift dramatically when situation allows chooser to always get more than other versus situation allows other to get more than chooser
• "richer" choosers (always ahead) tend to be individualistic-to-cooperative
• "poorer" choosers (always behind) are strongly competitive

Maki, Thorngate and McClintock studies (late 1960s): predicting choice behaviours

• Easy to predict and describe individualists and competitors
• Difficult to predict and describe cooperators and altruists
• Implications for viewing good in the world?

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Relevance of findings to real world? Social comparison revisited

• Equity theory and concepts of justice:

When inequity occurs, social pressures will increase to restore equity

• Competition and negotiation: Labour-management negotiations, divorce court: the Bargaining Board

• Revenge as minimizing other's gain, maximizing other's pain