Social Dilemmas: The Anatomy of Cooperation

Abstract

The study of social dilemmas is the study of the tension between individual and collective rationality. In a social dilemma, individually reasonable be- havior leads to a situation in which everyone is worse off. The first part of this review is a discussion of categories of social dilemmas and how they are modeled. The key two-person social dilemmas (Prisonerís Dilemma, Assur- ance, Chicken) and multiple-person social dilemmas (public goods dilem- mas and commons dilemmas) are examined. The second part is an extended treatment of possible solutions for social dilemmas. These solutions are or- ganized into three broad categories based on whether the solutions assume egoistic actors and whether the structure of the situation can be changed: Mo- tivational solutions assume actors are not completely egoistic and so give some weight to the outcomes of their partners. Strategic solutions assume egoistic actors, and neither of these categories of solutions involve changing the fundamental structure of the situation. Solutions that do involve chang- ing the rules of the game are considered in the section on structural solutions. I conclude the review with a discussion of current research and directions for future work.