26.3: How is Cooperation Possible?

When we focus on the reasoning in prisoner’s dilemmas, it can begin to seem that social cooperation is impossible. Under some conditions, it is very difficult to secure or maintain cooperation, but it clearly is possible in many situations, because cooperative endeavors often do work very well. People do help one another, they do donate money to charities, they do pitch in, in all sorts of ways. Given what we have seen about social dilemmas, how is this possible? If we could understand why it works in some cases, it might be easier to find solutions in cases where it doesn’t work so well.

In this section, we will examine several mechanisms that promote cooperation; but first, a warning is in order. When we focus on energy conservation or pollution control, cooperation looks like a good thing, and in such cases, it is. But cooperation isn’t intrinsically good; it all depends on the goals people are working to promote. A great many Germans worked together very efficiently to murder millions of Jews. As always, we have to think critically about each case.

Social dilemmas are a very mixed bag, and we shouldn’t expect any single strategy to solve all of them. In some of our examples, defection may be relatively easy to detect; in others, it might be impossible. In some cases, people know each other; in others, they will never see each other again. In some cases, coercion and sanctions are possible; in others, they aren’t. Some measures are relatively easy to implement; others would take a profound restructuring of society. But there are several devices that can promote cooperation in various conditions; they are not mutually exclusive, though some of them only make sense in certain settings.

1. Coercion We can force people to cooperate by imposing sanctions on those who do not. The state, with its network of laws, police, judicial system, and prisons are well-suited to this task.
2. Rewarding By-Products of Cooperation In many cases, working together with others is rewarding in and of itself.
3. Prudence and Prospect of Future Interaction In some cases, we will have to interact with people over time. If they have discovered our propensity to take free rides, our reputation will suffer and they will be less likely to share benefits in the future. There may be a short-term gain from cheating, but it is offset by the long-term costs.
4. Loyalty If the members of a group know each other and care about one another, cooperation will often be easier to achieve.
5. Moral Principles and Individual Ideals Moral principles and individual ideals, like the principle not to lie, or the ideal of being the sort of person who does their share, often prevent people from taking a free ride.

Coercion

Suppose that our prisoners were members of the mob, and knew that a contract would go out on them if they squealed. This alters the incentives or payoffs by raising the cost of defection to a point that the prisoners are likely to cooperate.

Many social dilemmas are solved by the coercive power of the state. Our tendency to obey authority, examined earlier in this module, is sometimes enough to get people to do their share. But self-interest is an extremely powerful force, and can override even the threat of authority. Governments can require cooperation because they can enforce sanctions against those who are caught not cooperating. A major reason why people pay taxes is that they will be penalized if they don’t; in effect the state forces us to pay for public goods by taxing us. The goal is to raise the cost of defection so that people will prefer to cooperate. There are many other examples of this sort. One reason why companies don’t dump pollution into the river, for instance, is that they will be fined if they are caught doing so.

Coercion can also be effective in some smaller groups. The workers in a factory may prefer the benefits of unionization (higher salaries, more job security) to their present situation. But they may also want to avoid the costs of being in the union themselves; one cost is union dues, but a higher cost is that the union might go out on strike and strikers may lose their jobs. In states that allow “closed shops,” ones in which all the workers can be required to belong to the union, workers are coerced into joining and so they can’t take a free ride of the backs of those willing to strike.

The threat of coercion is one way of achieving cooperation, but there are many settings in which it won’t work. Coercion is possible at the international level (one country can place embargoes on the goods of another country, bomb it, invade it, and so on), but it is rarely effective. The absence of a threat of coercion is of course one reason why it is often difficult to secure cooperation on the international level. In smaller groups, coercion is often more effective, but it can’t be the whole story behind cooperation in such settings. It doesn’t explain why people often forego a free ride in those cases where they won’t be caught (e.g., some kinds of voluntary rationing). Nor does it explain why we often help others in situations where we wouldn’t be punished or criticized if we hadn’t lent a hand (e.g., giving directions to a stranger; sending money to poor children in another country). Finally, in some groups, for example a married couple, coercion would achieve cooperation only at the cost of undermining the group.

But even when coercion is possible, it is not an attractive way to promote cooperation. Big, coercive government is very dangerous. Furthermore, if people only cooperate because they must, they are much more likely to seek opportunities to cheat. It would be better all the way around if people cooperated because they wanted to.

Positive By-Products of Cooperation

In some cases, cooperative endeavors are rewarding in and of themselves. Many people take pleasure in working alongside others for something they view as a good cause. Striving to promote a common end, like stacking sand bags by a river that’s about to flood the town, or banding together to fight for social justice, can generate friendships and feelings of solidarity. Even intrinsically unpleasant acts, like giving blood, can seem rewarding when we do it to help others. In many cases,social by-products do a lot to promote cooperation, but they can’t explain all cases. Even people who think we need taxes experience little solidarity with fellow taxpayers as they write out their checks on April 15. Few of us feel warm fellowship with others when we turn our thermostats down to conserve energy or flush our lowflow toilets. Moreover, while the positive side-effects of cooperation often do help maintain cooperative enterprises, they don’t explain how those enterprises get off the ground in the first place.

Prudence and the Prospect of Future Interaction

The members of small groups are likely to know each other and to interact over time. Here, pressures of conformity become stronger, and the worry about one’s reputation increases. If people come to think of you as a social parasite, your reputation will suffer. Many people find this aversive in itself. But it also means that others will be less willing to trust or help you in the future. So, often it is better to forego a short-run benefit (getting a free ride) in favor of the long-term benefits of cooperation. Free-riding may be in your short-term self-interest, but it is often in your longer-term self-interest to do your share.

We often do things we don’t particularly like doing now to enjoy benefits later. But we are human, and sometimes we go for good old instant gratification. Something right now – a cigarette, another piece of pie, a free ride on the efforts of others – often wins out over our long term best interests. So, foresight and prudence have theirs limits in the promotion of cooperation.

Worries about the prospect of future interaction diminish as the size of the group increases. In small rural communities, everybody knows everybody else, but large cities are much more anonymous. In large groups, it is easier to take free rides without detection, and even if others notice, the chances that we’ll ever meet again are slim. There is a good deal of evidence that smaller groups cooperate better than huge groups, and this is one reason why.

Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemmas

People who will interact with each other over time are not in the same position as our prisoners. With frequent contact, we learn which people can be trusted, and we adjust our behavior accordingly. Some aspects of this setting can be modeled by iterated prisoner’s dilemmas.

Here ‘iterated’ means ‘repeated’, so that two (or more parties) play a series of prisoner’s dilemma games. After a few rounds, each party has some idea about how trustworthy the other parties are. Groups of people can do this, and social scientists have studied their behavior when doing so. You can also do a computer simulation to see which strategies work best.

It turns out that the strategy that will win under many conditions is tit-for-tat. If the other person cooperates on one trial, you cooperate on the next (thus, rewarding cooperation). And if the other person defects on one trial, you defect on the next (thus, punishing defection). Why do you think this strategy works? The fact that tit-for-tat wins out under certain conditions may help explain why people would cooperate with others when they knew they would be interacting with them in the future. But we often help strangers that we know we’ll never see again, so, it can’t be the whole story.

Loyalty

Suppose that our prisoners knew each other well and cared about one another’s welfare. Perhaps they are brothers, or old friends. Each would then have reason to trust the other and to care about their welfare, and this would make them more likely to cooperate. More generally, groups that have common aims and shared understandings can often foster feelings of trust and solidarity. As groups become larger and more diverse, this becomes more difficult.

Moral Principles and Individual Ideals

What If Everybody Did That?

Ann: I know it’s election day, but I’m sort of tired. I’m just not going to vote.

Betty: But what if everybody did that?

Ann: But everybody doesn’t.

Betty: What if everybody reasoned that way? Then nobody would ever do the socially responsible thing.

But Betty’s responses simply invite the now-familiar litany. Either (almost) everyone will do the socially responsible thing or they won’t. If they do, then your contribution won’t be needed; if they don’t, your efforts to be a good citizen will be in vain. If we think in terms of short-term payoffs for ourselves, the question, “What if everybody did that?” isn’t going to faze us. We need reasons, other than narrow self-interest, to be moved by Betty’s line of argument.

Principles and Ideals

In fact, most people are motivated by things other than narrow self-interest. In the process of socialization, members of a culture internalize moral principles and individual ideals, and these exert an extremely powerful influence on behavior. For example, codes of honor played a central role in many cultures, particularly strongly hierarchical ones, and many people preferred death to dishonor. Indeed, throughout history, people have been willing to die for a cause.

In our original scenario, the prisoners were chiefly motivated by a desire to spend as little time in prison as possible. But suppose instead that they were political prisoners struggling for a cause they thought extremely valuable. In this case, one or both might be willing to make large sacrifices, even give up their life, to remain loyal to their cause and their comrade.

Altruism also leads many people to help others even when it is not in their narrow self-interest to do so. When the Nazis occupied France during World War II, many French people heroically risked their lives to hide Jewish people that they hadn’t even known previously. We do have a capacity to act in accordance with principles and from feelings of altruism, as well as out of narrow self-interest, and these often promote cooperation.

Most of us, for example, believe that lying is wrong. This principle will make us more likely to cooperate in cases when we have promised to do so. Our self-image may also be that of a person who does their share, who keeps their bargains, whether other people do so or not. Even if you could cheat without being detected, you wouldn’t do so because you think that it’s wrong, or because you don’t want to be the sort of person who cuts corners or takes the easy way out.

Suppose that Steve’s chief motivation for cooperating is mere prudence; he doesn’t want to be caught cheating because people wouldn’t treat him very well in the future. Since his motivations are to avoid suffering the consequence of detection, it makes as much sense for him to seek subtle ways of cheating as it does for him to cooperate. But if Steve is motivated by the belief that cheating is wrong, he won’t do this. It would be a mistake to underestimate the power of norms and ideals, but as history makes lamentably clear, they are too weak to sustain all cooperative endeavors (including living together in peace) without help from other sources.