Cooperation In The Context Of Loss And Gain:the Infulune Of Resource Allocation Structure And Socioeconomic Status

Cooperation is central to human social behavior.However,choosing to cooperate requires individuals to incur a personal cost to benefit others:Individuals need to choose between self and collective interests.However,previous studies have focused on cooperative behaviors in the gain context,and the conflict between individual and collective interests focuses on the positive results or values.In real life,we often face the context of loss,when the conflict between individual and collective interests focuses on negative results or values.Recently,researchers have used symmetric dilemma design to investigate the cooperative behavior of individuals in loss context.In symmetric social dilemmas,the equal distribution of available resources makes individuals in an ideal fair situation.However,the unfair phenomenon in reality shows that individuals are often in the social situation of unequal distribution of resources.Therefore,it is more effective to investigate the cooperative behavior of individuals under the unequal distribution of resources.The unequal distribution of resources makes individuals face an unfair situation:Individuals are either superior or inferior to others.Different from the temporary situation of advantages and disadvantages caused by the difference in resource distribution,the difference in status advantages and disadvantages caused by social class differentiation is more stable:Those with high social status have advantages in many aspects of social life,while those with low social status often have disadvantages.Previous studies have found that there are differences in the performance of pro-social behaviors among high and low status individuals,but few studies have examined the cooperative behaviors of high and low status individuals in the context of loss.In conclusion,this study attempts to explore the cooperative behaviors of individuals in the context of loss and gain respectively from the perspectives of the difference between the advantages and disadvantages of resource distribution structure and the differences between the advantages and disadvantages of social status.In experiment 1,based on the classic public resource dilemma paradigm and an improvement version,the public resource dilemma paradigm under the loss context is set up through the adjustment of valence.The public resource dilemma of the two contexts(loss and gain)is further classified:Three resource allocation structures are designed,resource equality allocation,resource relative advantage and resource relative disadvantage.The purpose of this study is to investigate the level of cooperation between the subjects under the context of loss and gain when they face different resource allocation structures.The results showed that the cooperation level in the loss context was significantly higher than the cooperation level under the gain context.Moreover,when the individual is in the equal distribution of resources,the cooperation level is significantly higher than that of the resource relative advantage and relative disadvantage.The experimental results show that the cooperation level is higher when the individual is in the loss context,and the unfair distribution of resources will affect cooperative behavior.Experiment 2 induced the subjective socio-economic status of participants through the MacArthur scale paradigm,and then allows participants to finish the public resource dilemma paradigm in the context of loss and gain.The results showed that the cooperation level in the loss context was significantly higher than the cooperation level under the gain context.The interaction effect between contexts and subjective SES was found:in the gain context,the cooperation level of the lower relative SES was significantly higher than that of the higher relative SES,but there was no difference in the level of cooperation between the two in the loss context.The results show that the cooperative behavior of individuals with different subjective socioeconomic status is affected by the context.In the gain context,the cooperation level of the low subjective socioeconomic status is higher than that of the high subjective socio-economic status.In the context of loss,there is no difference in the level of cooperation between individuals with high and low subjective socioeconomic status,both of which show a high level of cooperation.To sum up,the main conclusions of this study are as follows:1)In the public resource dilemma,the cooperation between individuals in the loss context is higher than the gain context.2)Unfair distribution of resources leads to a marked decline in cooperative behaviors in social dilemmas.3)Individuals with lower socio-economic status have higher levels of cooperation in the gain context than those of higher socio-economic status,but the cooperative behaviors of the two are no different when they are in a loss context.