Project Details
Projekt
The Influence of Social Comparisons on Cooperation and Fairness
Applicant
Professorin Dr. Bettina Rockenbach
Subject Area
Economic Theory
Term
from 2014 to 2019
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 246329797
Understanding the determinants of human cooperation is a central question in the social sciences. In recent years, a considerable literature has developed and identified conditional cooperation, i.e., the willingness to cooperate if others (are expected to) do so as well as a fundamental driving force. This concept, rooted in social psychology (Kelley & Stahelski, 1970), spirited many economic theories of social comparisons (see Fehr & Schmidt, 2006, for an overview). But whom do people compare to? Up to now the economic literature has primarily focused on comparisons to interaction partners, i.e. active players in the underlying game theoretic model. However, most of our real world interactions are embedded in a wider social context. Very recently it has been shown that comparison processes to inactive bystanders may play a crucial role for individuals¿ willingness to cooperate (Engel & Rockenbach, 2011). Furthermore, a recent paper by Böhm and Rockenbach (2013) shows that the mere comparison of cooperation rates to a structurally independent group promotes (intragroup) cooperation. These studies provide strong evidence that we should broaden our focus beyond the boundaries of the direct interaction partners. But, if comparisons are not restricted to interaction partners, the selection of comparison standards becomes an information search and selection problem. The proposed research integrates psychological research on social comparisons and economic research on cooperation and fairness, to enlarge the perspective of comparison processes for human decision making in economic situations. Specifically we will investigate 1. How subjects interacting in a cooperation dilemma react to social comparisons to outsiders; 2. Which social comparison information of outsiders subjects in an allocation game seek and which information they avoid; and 3. Which social comparison information subjects seek when making fairness judgments. Our research aims at providing valuable insights into the antecedents, consequences and psychological processes of social comparisons in economic situations and ultimately at providing the basis for a refinement and advancement of current economic models and theories in the domain of social comparisons and economic decision making.
DFG Programme
Research Units
