The modern world faces many global issues – terrorism, global warming, refugees, depleted fisheries, deforestation… The list is long. The solutions to these issues all have one commonality – they require cooperation.  Psychologists study how to improve cooperation in order to make a group more productive.  Extending this sense of cooperation to a much larger, globalized community is rather difficult. What are the steps that we can take to improve cooperation?  What are the obstacles that we face?

Cooperation is a form of pro-social behaviour.  It is when people work together with commonly agreed-upon goals, instead of working separately in competition.

Cooperation is the ideal in solving many global issues, but when we are left to our own devices, most people behave in their own self-interest, even though a resource is rapidly depleted. Bicchieri (2006) argues that social norms are an important reason why people cooperate. She suggests that conforming to the norm depends on believing that a sufficient number of others will conform and that a sufficient number of others expect the person to conform. The second condition often can be fulfilled by a society passing laws – such as, fining people who litter – or imposing limitations such as water rationing or only allowing people to drive in the city every other day.  But even when these societal norms are put into law, that doesn’t mean that people will follow them. What might be the factors that affect whether people cooperate or not?

Factors influencing cooperation

Although Dawes et al’s (1986) study appears to show that greed can play a role in one’s lack of cooperation, research shows that there are several factors that may influence one’s willingness to cooperate.

One factor that determines whether individuals cooperate or compete is the nature of the situation itself.  We all know that teachers can create a competitive spirit in a classroom – or a cooperative one.  It comes down to the classroom norms. In a history class, is the class focused on competitive debates where someone always “wins?” – or is the class focused on consensus building in trying to solve problems?

 Teacher only box

When designing your experiment think about the following:

How would you operationalize your variables?

It is important that students decide how they will "manipulate" the level of competition and how they will measure "learning."  Both tasks are difficult to do.  They might have a reading comprehension exercise as a race, have a team competition for learning something in science, or having students prepare for a spelling competition (for example).

Which design would you use - repeated measures or independent samples? Why would you choose that design?

Either design is appropriate, but they have different limitations.  The repeated measures design controls for individual differences (participant variability); the independent samples design allows for the same materials to be used in both conditions and controls for order effects.

What would be your procedure? Would it be easily replicated?

These will be different depending on what the students choose as their IV and DV.

What would be the ethical consideration necessary when running your experiment?

It would be important that there is no undue stress when carrying out the study.  The teacher might suggest that certain students not be asked to take part in the study. There is also the importance of getting permission from the parents for their children to take part in the study.  The debriefing is not only for the school board, but it would be important to debrief the children, their parents, and the teachers involved.

The behaviour of others in our group may also affect our willingness to cooperate. Decisions about whether to cooperate or compete are also influenced by expectations about the likely behaviour of others. The tendency to think that others will act in a competitive manner is more likely to cause problems when we are not sure what others are going to do. When we have a good idea of what the others in the situation are doing, we will likely match our responses to theirs. So when we see that others are cooperating, we are likely to cooperate as well. This is a form of informational social influence.

Kerr (1983) carried out an experiment in which 75 undergraduates ((39 males, 36 females) were asked to pump air, pressing a small rubber bulb in each hand for 30 seconds.  The air was collected and measured by a spirometer.  The participants were in one of four conditions:  Alone (the control), with a capable partner who worked hard, with a capable partner who was not working hard, or individually, but with someone who was doing the test at the same time and not showing much effort.

Kerr found that those that worked with a capable partner who was working hard pumped less air than when they were pumping air by themselves; they exhibited what the researchers called the free-riding effect.  Those that worked with a capable partner who did not pull his weight also pumped less air - a phenomenon known as the sucker effect. The sucker effect (also known as social loafing) occurs when people perceive that they are doing more than their fair share of the group's work; one way to reduce the injustice of such a situation is to reduce their own level of effort. Interestingly, in the fourth condition, the results were similar to the control condition.  This indicates that our willingness to cooperate or not is not simply an imitation of a model’s behaviour, but rather a desire not to be a “sucker” and do more work than everyone else.

Sattler & Kerr (1991) found that social norms that encourage cooperation play a key role in behaviour. In their experiment, one group of participants first listened to members of a group who had just completed the game that the new participants were about to start.  These group members were actually confederates, working with the researcher.  They made statements like, “Maybe I could have gotten more if I was greedy, but I just couldn’t do it.  If I’m in a group, I’m going to try to do what helps the group, not just myself!”  A control group did not hear such statements prior to the task. The researchers found that those that had heard the statements before the game, were less competitive and were more cooperative than those that did not hear the statements about cooperation.

Group size also has an effect on one’s willingness to help.  It is often the case that cooperation decreases in larger groups. One explanation for this is that as the number of group members increases, each person’s behaviour becomes less identifiable, which is likely to increase free riding. Furthermore, people feel that they can make less of a difference in the outcome of larger groups. Larger groups may also lead to deindividuation – that is, a loss of self-awareness and a feeling of being anonymous – and thus not feeling the pressure to conform to a social norm of cooperation.

A final variable that may affect one’s willingness to cooperate may be culture.  Gabrenya, Wang & Latané (1985) studied schoolchildren from the United States (an individualistic society) and Taiwan (a collectivistic society). They carried out an auditory task that required counting tone patterns either alone or in pairs. Americans tended to show a lack of cooperation – or social loafing – when in pairs, but demonstrated strong effort when alone, when one’s individual contribution would be clearly noted.  The Taiwanese students demonstrated cooperation when working in pairs – doing better when working with someone than when working alone.

 Teacher only box

There are several potential responses.  They include looking at how financial incentives may make a difference.  Labeling products sold in the West as "sustainable" has become a trend.  Companies that do not follow environmentally sustainable practices are not able to use this label.  A recent explanation of this can be seen in the case of Korindo, a Korean palm oil producer.

Another way is to create a social norm (a global norm) for protecting the planet.  This can only be achieved if the nations that are more developed begin to have a common voice for protecting the environment.

Finally, appeals to collectivism and showing people that there is a very important value in adopting these practices should lead to cooperation. As we will see in the study by Sherif, superordinate problems lead to cooperation.  Unfortunately, as we are seeing with increased climate change, it may take a series of disasters for people to realize the extent of the problem that we are facing in order for them to cooperate on reaching a solution.

Other ways to increase cooperation can be found in the pro-social behaviour chapter – in the section on promoting pro-social behaviour.

Checking for understanding

Prejudice