Question

Why collective interest is important than selective interest?

Answer 1

The health and vitality of relationships, groups, and the society at large is strongly challenged by social dilemmas, or conflicts between short-term self-interest and long-term collective interest. Pollution, depletion of natural resources, and intergroup conflict, can be characterized as examples of urgent social dilemmas. Social dilemmas are challenging because acting in one’s immediate self-interest is tempting to everyone involved, even though everybody benefits from acting in the longer-term collective interest. For example, relationships are healthier if partners do not neglect one another’s preferences, organizations are more productive if employees spontaneously exchange one another’s expertise, and nations fare better to the extent that they show respect for one another’s values, norms, and traditions. Similarly, in the long run everyone would benefit from a cleaner environment, yet how many are prepared to voluntarily reduce their carbon footprint by saving more energy or driving or flying less frequently?

One real world social dilemma occurred during the Winter of 1978/1979 in the Netherlands. Due to an unusually heavy snow, a small village in the North of the Netherlands was completely cut off from the rest of country so that there was no electricity to use for light, heating, television, etc. However, one of the 150 inhabitants owned a generator that could provide sufficient electricity to all people of this small community if and only if they exercised substantial restraint in their energy use. For example, they should use only one light, they should not use heated water, the heating should be limited to about 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit), and the curtains should be closed. As it turned out, the generator collapsed because most people were in fact using heated water, living comfortably at 21 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit), watching television, and burning several lights simultaneously. After being without electricity for a while, the citizens were able to repair the generator, and this time, they appointed inspectors to check whether people were using more electricity than they agreed upon. But even then, the generator eventually collapsed due to overuse of energy. And again, all inhabitants suffered from the cold and lack of light, and of course, could not watch television.

The remainder of this page offers a formal definition and classification of social dilemmas, covers several theories of cooperation in social dilemmas, and describes three broad strategies for eliciting cooperation in social dilemmas. The majority of this material was taken from Wikipedia’s excellent summary of social dilemmas.

Defining social dilemmas

Social dilemmas are formally defined by two outcome-relevant properties: (1) each person has an individual rational strategy which yields the best outcome (or pay-off) in all circumstances (the non-cooperative choice, also known as the dominating strategy); (2) if all individuals pursue this strategy it results in a deficient collective outcome–everyone would be better off by cooperating (the deficient equilibrium). Researchers frequently use the experimental games method to study social dilemmas in the laboratory. An experimental game is a situation in which participants choose between cooperative and non-cooperative alternatives, yielding consequences for themselves and others. These games are generally depicted with an outcome matrix representing valuable outcomes for participants like money or lottery tickets.

Types of social dilemmas

The literature on social dilemmas has historically revolved three metaphorical stories, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the Public Goods Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons (see Commons Dilemma) and each of these stories has been modeled as an experimental game.