A Study On The Social Rationality Of Cooperative Behavior In Social Dilemma

Social dilemma is more and more concerned by sociologists, economists and psychologists, especially on the topics of population, resource and environmental pollution. The subject of social dilemma research can be concluded tow aspects, one discusses the individual's rationality character in social dilemma, the other discusses the influencing factors of cooperation in social dilemma. With reviewing the literatures, there are many inconsistencies in their results. More and more researcher realizes that to find the people's social rationality factors in social dilemma is the key to improve the cooperation.On the perspective of social rationality, this paper discusses how social identity influences subjects' decision making in social dilemma based on social identity theory and the logic of appropriateness. This paper is consisted of the following 4 parts:Study 1 focuses on the facets of social rationality (such as social identity, social norm), and analyzes their influences on the level of cooperation. According to March's logic of appropriateness, this study emphasizes social rational facets' influence on subjects' decision making. The results indicate that the behavior in the second stage is different from the baseline in the first stage. The subjects contribute more in the second stage. The facets of social rationality are more important than rational calculation in donation situation. Someone with specific social identity (organizer) is more cooperative than usually participator, and takes on more responsibility.Based on study 1, study 2 focuses on the influences of identification, discusses how different level of identification influence subjects' cooperation in social dilemma. This study uses nested dilemma paradigm proposed by Wit and Kerr (2002) to simulate conflicts between individual, subgroup and collection, and observes how the subjects make decision in such a situation. Resent researches indicate that highlighting subjects' certain social category can focus subjects' attention on corresponding category's interests, and make them do more for corresponding category's interests. Nested dilemma paradigm divides the identification into three levels, namely individual identification, subgroup identification and collective identification. Three conclusions are given in this study. First, the results confirm the social identity theory (SIT), indicating that making some social category salient can increase subjects' cooperation for corresponding social category. Second, in the situation of individual identification, social orientation doesn't influence subjects' donation significantly. Third, by discussing the mechanism of social identity, the researcher finds that social responsibility plays a mediated role, and raising the level of responsibility is important to push social dilemma further.In study 3, the researcher discusses the psychology mechanism of identity salience in public good dilemma. Deci (1999) indicated that extrinsic motivation would decrease the intrinsic motivation of donating voluntary, and then, change the fame of cooperation. Based on this proposition, this study discusses the effect of identity salience on the perspective of inhibition or activation of cooperative motivation (salient cooperator or salient non-cooperator). Also, this study discusses the relationship of social orientation, the difference of initial fortune in group and the effect of identity salience. In this study, the researcher uses the paradigm of "Removing the Sanction" to probe how the different operation of identity salience influence subjects' cooperation, and what happen when the operation was removed. The subjects level of cooperation can be increased by making either cooperator or non-cooperator salient. However, the functions of these two types of identity salience are different. Salient cooperator activates people's intrinsic cooperation motivation, whereas salient non-cooperator, inhibit subjects' intrinsic cooperation motivation. Moreover, when cooperation behavior is salient, subjects with cooperation value are more influenced by intrinsic motivation, whereas subjects with individual value are more influenced by extrinsic motivation. In the situation of cooperation salience, the group with indifferent initial fortune is more easily activated to cooperate than group with different initial fortune.Based on study 3, study 4 discusses how social identity influences cooperation. In our daily life, everyone has multiple social identities. The researcher gives subjects different social identities by social operation, and then, analyzes subjects' cooperation in social dilemma to know more about a person with "social rationality". The different composition of group may elicit decentralization of responsibility, and then influence subjects' cooperation. Based on social identity theory, this study divides social identities into two categories, one is explicit and the other implicit. In this study, the researcher uses experimental operation to highlight subjects' different social identity to understand how different social identity influences cooperation. The researcher proposes that social responsibility is an important mechanism. The results indicate responsibility would influence subjects' cooperation. High responsibility can increase subjects' donation of fortune and power. Both the explicit and implicit social identities are simultaneously, and make effect in different condition. They both have an effect on subjects' cooperation through the mechanism of responsibility. The composition of group has effect on responsibility. And then influence subjects' cooperation.Finally, based on all above results, research expands the logic of appropriateness and advances the "social rationality model" in social dilemmas.