Social dilemma

A social dilemma is a situation in which an individual profits from selfishness unless everyone chooses the selfish alternative, in which case the whole group loses. Problems arise when too many group members choose to pursue individual profit and immediate satisfaction rather than behave in the group’s best long-term interests. Social dilemmas can take many forms and are studied across disciplines such as psychology, economics, and political science. Examples of phenomena that can be explained using social dilemmas include resource depletion, low voter turnout, and overpopulation.

The prisoner’s dilemma is a simple game that serves as the basis for research on social dilemmas. The premise of the game is that two partners in crime are imprisoned separately and each are offered leniency if they provide evidence against the other. As seen in the table below, the optimal individual outcome is to testify against the other without being testified against. However, the optimal group outcome is for the two prisoners to cooperate with each other.

A public goods dilemma is a situation in which the whole group can benefit if some of the members give something for the common good but individuals benefit from “free riding” if enough others contribute. Public goods are defined by two characteristics: non-excludability and non-rivalry—meaning that anyone can benefit from them and one person’s use of them does not hinder another person’s use of them. An example is public broadcasting that relies on contributions from viewers. Since no single viewer is essential for providing the service, viewers can reap the benefits of the service without paying anything for it. If not enough people contribute, the service cannot be provided. In economics, the literature around public goods dilemmas refers to the phenomenon as the free rider problem. The economic approach is broadly applicable and can refer to the free-riding that accompanies any sort of public good. In social psychology, the literature refers to this phenomenon as social loafing. Whereas as free-riding is generally used to describe public goods, social loafing refers specifically to the tendency for people to exert less effort when in a group than when working alone.

A replenishing resource management dilemma is a situation in which group members share a renewable resource that will continue to produce benefits if group members do not over harvest it but in which any single individual profits from harvesting as much as possible.

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Wikipedia