The Effects Of Scarcity Mindset And Social Norms On Cooperative Behavior

With the acceleration of industrialization,the problem of resource scarcity has become increasingly prominent,which has become an important factor restricting the further development of global economy and society.Under the background,promoting cooperation and opening up a new win-win situation has become an important strategic deployment in the new era.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore how human cooperation will develop under the scarcity mindset.Existing studies have reached conflicting conclusions,with some finding that scarcity promotes cooperative behavior,while others finding that scarcity reduces cooperative behavior.Previous studies have not made a unified definition and measurement of scarcity mindset,and have not comprehensively considered the influence of individual internal and external factors under scarcity mindset.Some studies have pointed out that the prosocial behavior of individuals with scarcity mindset will be affected by intergroup factors,and social norms are one of the important factors affecting the level of individual cooperation.However,previous studies on the influence of scarcity mindset on cooperative behavior have ignored social norms,an important external factor.This study will use a more sophisticated experimental paradigm to manipulate individuals’ scarcity mindset and explore how individuals’ cooperative behavior will be affected by social norms in intergroup interactions after experiencing scarcity mindset.Since different kinds of social norms reflect different motivations of individuals to comply with norms,in order to further clarify the ways and motivations of individuals of scarcity mindset to comply with norms,better use of these two norms to change individual behavior,this study also explores how different kinds of social norms affect the formation of such behavior patterns.Experiment 1 examined whether individuals who had experienced scarcity mindset versus abundance mindset showed different levels of cooperation under descriptive norms(i.e.,when they were told that the level of cooperation between the two groups was different).This study adopted a two-factor mixed design,in which the between-subject variable is mindset(including scarcity mindset and abundance mindset),the within-subject variable is the degree of prosocial norms(including high and low prosocial norms),and the dependent variable is the level of cooperation(i.e.the amount of individual investment).The results showed that 1)individuals invested more money after experiencing scarcity mindset than after experiencing abundance mindset;2)Compared with the low prosocial norm environment,individuals in the high prosocial norm environment will invest more money;3)Under the condition of high prosocial norms,individuals invested significantly more after experiencing scarcity mindset than after experiencing abundance mindset;In the low prosocial condition,there was no significant difference between the amount of investment after experiencing abundance mindset and that after experiencing scarcity mindset.In experiment 2,the effects of scarcity mindset and abundance mindset on the cooperation level of an individual under the prohibitive norm(i.e.,when an individual is told that the two groups expect different levels of cooperation from him)were experienced.This study adopted a two-factor mixed design,in which the between-subject variable is mindset(including scarcity mindset and abundance mindset),the within-subject variable is the degree of prosocial norms(including high and low prosocial norms),and the dependent variable is the level of cooperation(i.e.the amount of individual investment).The results showed that: 1)the main effect margin of mindset was significant,and individuals invested more money after experiencing scarcity mindset than after experiencing abundance mindset;2)Compared with the low prosocial norm environment,individuals in the high prosocial norm environment will invest more money;3)Under the condition of high prosocial norms,individuals invested significantly more after experiencing scarcity mindset than after experiencing abundance mindset;In the low prosocial condition,there was no significant difference between the amount of investment after experiencing abundance mindset and that after experiencing scarcity mindset.In conclusion,the cooperation level of individuals who experience scarcity mindset will increase under both descriptive and injunctive norms,and this effect will be regulated by the degree of social norms,that is,under the condition of high prosocial norms,the cooperation level of individuals who experience scarcity mindset is higher than that of individuals who experience abundance mindset.Under the condition of low prosocial norms,there was no significant difference in the level of cooperation between individuals who had experienced the two mindsets.This study reveals the important effects of scarcity mindset and social norms on cooperative behavior,and more comprehensively understands how to better utilize social norms to promote the establishment of cooperative relationships between individuals in scarcity situations.