Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Group cooperation under uncertainty

  • Published:
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Previous research has shown an ‘interindividual-intergroup discontinuity effect’: intergroup interactions generally lead to less cooperative outcomes than interindividual interactions. We replicate the discontinuity effect in the deterministic prisoner’s dilemma, but find that groups are more cooperative than individuals in a stochastic version of the game. Three major factors that underlie the usual discontinuity effect are reduced in the stochastic environment: greed, fear, and persuasion power. Two group mechanisms are proposed to explain the reversed discontinuity effect: the motivation to avoid guilt and blame when making decisions that affect others’ welfare, and the social pressure to conform to certain norms when one is in a group setting.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. A mixed-motive matrix game is defined as “any game in which the players’ preferences among the outcomes are partly coincident and partly opposed, motivating the players both to cooperate and to compete, as in the Prisoner’s Dilemma game.” (Colman 2001).

  2. The difference in the value of the Talers for the two games was designed to make the payoff magnitudes the same for individuals making decisions on their own and for those in three-person groups.

  3. Out of the 36 groups who indicated how they made their decisions in the survey questionnaires, 32 groups reached unanimous decisions and 4 groups applied majority voting.

  4. We had a mechanical failure in the study which prevented us from recording some group discussions.

  5. Wildschut et al. (2003) also identify four moderators of the discontinuity effect: opponent strategy, procedural interdependence, communication, and conflict of interest, which are not very relevant to this paper because our experimental design made the four moderators the same in all treatments.

  6. Following research on cooperation, greed is defined as greed for larger profit by taking advantage of the other party’s cooperation, and fear as fear of being exploited by the other party if self cooperates.

  7. Imagine that an average subject has a 1/2 chance to figure out the dominant strategy. If we assume that once one member figures it out, the whole group follows her, an average group with 3 subjects has 1−(1/2)3 = 7/8 chance to find the dominant strategy.

  8. Data are from another study in which subjects played the same game as the current one except that the investment was 36 instead of 45. Subjects in that study were from the same subject pool as the current study.

  9. This is an observation we made while listening to the tapes, not quantitative data.

References

  • Ai, C., & Norton, E. C. (2003). Interaction terms in logit and probit models. Economics Letters, 80, 123–129.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baron, J. (2001). Confusion of group-interest and self-interest in parochial cooperation on behalf of a group. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 45, 283–296.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baumeister, R. F., Stillwell, A. M., & Heatherton, T. F. (1994). Guilt: an interpersonal approach. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 243–267.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bereby-Meyer, Y., & Roth, A. E. (2006). The speed of learning in noisy games: partial reinforcement and the sustainability of cooperation. American Economic Review, 96, 1029–1042.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berger, L. A., & Hershey, J. C. (1994). Moral hazard, risk seeking, and free riding. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 9, 173–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bornstein, G., & Ben-Yossef, M. (1994). Cooperation in intergroup and single-group social dilemmas. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 30, 52–67.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bornstein, G., Kugler, T., & Ziegelmeyer, A. (2004). Individual and group behavior in the Centipede game: are groups more “rational” players? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 599–605.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bottom, W. P., Ladha, K., & Miller, J. (2002). Propagation of individual bias through group decision making: error in the treatment of asymmetrically informative signals. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 25(2), 147–163.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Charness, G., & Dufwenberg, M. (2006). Promises and partnership. Econometrica, 74(6), 1579–1601.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Charness, G., & Jackson, M. O. (2009). The role of responsibility in strategic risk-taking. The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 69(3), 241–247.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Charness, G., Karni, E., & Levin, D. (2007). Individual and group decision making under risk: an experimental study of Bayesian updating and violations of first-order stochastic dominance. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 35(2), 129–148.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Colman, A. M. (2001). A dictionary of psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, D. J., & Kagel, J. H. (2005). Are two heads better than one? Team versus individual play in signaling games. American Economic Review, 477–509: American Economic Association.

  • Davis, J. H. (1992). Some compelling intuitions about group consensus decisions, theoretical and empirical research, and interpersonal aggregation phenomena: selected examples, 1950–1990. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 52, 3–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dawes, R. M. (1980). Social dilemmas. Annual Review of Psychology, 31, 169–193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dawes, R. M., & Thaler, R. H. (1988). Anomalies: cooperation. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2(3), 187–197.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fischbacher, U. (2007). z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments. Experimental Economics, 10(2), 171–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heal, G., & Kunreuther, H. (2007). Modeling interdependent risks. Risk Analysis, 27(3), 621–634.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Insko, C. A., & Schopler, J. (1998). Differential distrust of groups and of individuals. In C. Sedikides, J. Schopler & C. A. Insko (Eds.), Intergroup cognition and intergroup behavior (pp. 75–107). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Insko, C. A., Pinkley, R. L., Hoyle, R. H., Dalton, B., Hong, G., Slim, R., et al. (1987). Individual versus group discontinuity: the role of intergroup contact. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 23, 250–267.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Insko, C. A., Schopler, J., Hoyle, R. H., Dardis, G. J., & Graetz, K. A. (1990). Individual-group discontinuity as a function of fear and greed. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 58, 68–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Isenberg, D. J. (1986). Group polarization: a critical review and meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(6), 1141–1151.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: an analysis of decisions under risk. Econometrica, 47, 313–327.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kerr, L. N., MacCoun, R. J., & Kramer, G. P. (1996). Bias in judgment: comparing individuals and groups. Psychological Review, 103, 687–719.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kocher, M., & Sutter, M. (2005). The decision maker matters: individual versus group behaviour in experimental beauty-contest games. Economic Journal, 115(500), 200–223.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kocher, M., & Sutter, M. (2007). Decision making process in gift-exchange experiments. Empirica, 34(1), 63–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kunreuther, H., & Heal, G. (2003). Interdependent security. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 26(2–3), 231–249.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kunreuther, H., Silvasi, G., Bradlow, E. & Small, D. (2008). Bayesian analysis of deterministic and Stochastic prisoner’s dilemma games. Wharton Risk Center Working Paper #2008-06-06.

  • Long, J. S. (1997). Regression models for categorical and limited dependent variables. Advanced Quantitative Techniques in the Social Sciences Number 7. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

  • Orbell, J., & Dawes, R. (1981). Social dilemmas. In G. Stephenson & H. H. Davis (Eds.), Progress in applied social psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 37–65). New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rapoport, A., & Eshed-Levy, D. (1989). Provision of step-level public goods: effects of greed and fear of being gypped. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 44(3), 325–344.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schopler, J., Insko, C. A., Drigotas, S., Wieselquist, J., Pemberton, M., & Cox, C. (1995). The role of identifiability in the reduction of interindividual-intergroup discontinuity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 31, 553–574.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Seymour, B., Daw, N. D., Dayan, P., Singer, T., & Dolan, R. J. (2007). Differential encoding of losses and gains in the human striatum. Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 4826–4831.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., Jack White, B., William, R. H., & Sherif, C. W. (1961). Intergroup conflict and cooperation: The robber’s cave experiment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shupp, R. S., & Williams, A. W. (2008). Risk preference differentials of small groups and individuals. The Economic Journal, 118(525), 258–283.

    Google Scholar 

  • Song, F. (2008). Trust and reciprocity behavior and behavioral forecasts: individuals versus group-representatives. Games and Economic Behavior, 62(2), 675–696.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stoner, J. A. (1961). A comparison of individual and group decisions involving risk. Cambridge: Unpublished master’s thesis, School of Industrial Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  • Sutter, M. (2005). Are four heads better than two? An experimental beauty-contest game with teams of different size. Economics Letters, 41–46.

  • Tajfel, H. (1982). Social psychology of intergroup relations. Annual Review of Psychology, 33, 1–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Turner, J. C. (1991). Social influence. Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wildschut, T., Pinter, B., Vevea, J. L., Insko, C. A., & Schopler, J. (2003). Beyond the group mind: a quantitative review of the interindividual-intergroup discontinuity effect. Psychological Bulletin, 129(5), 698–722.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We appreciate helpful comments and suggestions from David Aadland, Colin Camerer, Rachel Croson, Jason Dana, Charles Holt, David Krantz, Robert Meyer, Charles Plott, Deborah Small, and participants at the CRED 2008 Annual Meeting, the CREATE Behavioral Economics and Terrorism Workshop, the SJDM 2008 Annual Conference, Jonathan Baron lab meeting, and weekly seminar at the Marketing Department, the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. We thank the Wharton Behavior Lab, Leonid Markel, and Sarah Martin for collecting and compiling the data. We also wish to thank Kip Viscusi and an anonymous reviewer for their feedback and suggestions on an earlier version of the paper. This research is supported by National Science Foundation grant CMS-0527598.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Columbia University, 406 Schermerhorn Hall—MC 5501, 1190 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY, 10027, USA

    Min Gong

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Jonathan Baron

  3. Decisions Sciences and Public Policy, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Howard Kunreuther

  4. Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Howard Kunreuther

Authors
  1. Min Gong
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jonathan Baron
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Howard Kunreuther
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Min Gong.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Gong, M., Baron, J. & Kunreuther, H. Group cooperation under uncertainty. J Risk Uncertain 39, 251–270 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11166-009-9080-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11166-009-9080-2

Keywords

JEL Classification

Search

Navigation