The Effect Of Social Comparison On Cooperative Behavior In Social Dilemmas

As an important way of behavior in modern society,cooperation has attracted much attention from researchers.Cooperation in life is often in a situation where individual interests conflict with collective interests.In this complex situation,individual cooperation behavior is affected in many ways.Cooperation itself has interpersonal interaction,so the relationship between the individual and the interactive object will inevitably affect the level of cooperation.Social comparison widely exists in all aspects of life.It is a psychological process spontaneously carried out in interpersonal interaction.This study uses three experiments to explore the influence of social comparison on cooperative behavior in social dilemmas and its internal mechanism.Experiment 1 adopts a single factor inter-subject design,recruits 105 subjects,and puts the subjects in different social comparison directions through the "character description task" to examine the influence of social comparison on cooperative behavior.The independent variable is the direction of social comparison(upward comparison/non-comparison/downward comparison),and the dependent variable indicator is the number of tokens(ie the level of cooperation)that the subjects put into the public account in the public goods game.The results show that the upward society lowers the level of cooperation,and the downward society improves the level of individual cooperation.Experiment 2 uses a single-factor inter-subject design.The independent variable is the social comparison direction(upward comparison/downward comparison),and the dependent variable indicators are the subjects' accuracy in the Navon letter judgment task,reaction time,and subjects in the public goods game The number of tokens put into the public account(ie the level of cooperation).Sixty-two subjects were recruited,and the results of the Raven reasoning test were used to feed back the direction of social comparison,and to explore the internal mechanism of the influence of social comparison on cooperative behavior,with a view to discovering the mediating role of global-local cognitive processing.The results show that:(1)Upward social comparison induces partial processing preference,which in turn inhibits individual cooperative behavior;(2)Downward social comparison induces individual overall processing preference,which in turn promotes individual cooperative behavior;(3)The mediation of overall-local processing preference The effect occurred in the subjects unconsciously.Experiment 3 adopts the experimental design of 2(social comparison direction:upward comparison/downward comparison × 3(processing method training: overall training/partial training/non-training)between subjects,and the dependent variable indicator is the subjects in the social dilemma task The number of tokens allocated to the public account(i.e.the level of cooperation).150 subjects were recruited and trained on the cognitive processing methods of the subjects after social comparison,in order to achieve the purpose of influencing the significant changes in their cooperation level.The results show that:(1)The overall processing method training improves the individual cooperation level;(2)The local processing method training reduces the individual cooperation level;(3)Compared with the upward comparison group,the downward comparison group is more sensitive to the processing method training.This research mainly draws the following conclusions:(1)The upward social comparison reduces the level of individual cooperation;the downward social comparison increases the level of individual cooperation.(2)The whole-part processing mode plays an intermediary role in the process of social comparison's influence on cooperative behavior.(3)The overall processing method training improves the level of individual cooperation;the local processing method training reduces the level of individual cooperation.