Prisoner's Dilemma if we assume the people involved have a sufficiently strong conscience.
Alice might be thinking: “If I assume Bob will cooperate, I have two choices. If I cooperate, I'll get my purchase and feel good about cooperating with Bob. If I defect, I'll get my purchase for free but I'll feel guilty about cheating Bob. That guilty feeling is worse than giving up the money, so it makes sense for me to cooperate. On the other hand, if I assume Bob will cheat me, my two choices look like this: If I cooperate, Bob will take my money and I'll feel stupid and angry for cooperating with a cheat. If I defect, I won't get my purchase and will feel guilty for trying to cheat Bob. That stupid feeling for being cheated is a little worse than the guilty feeling for trying to cheat Bob—who turned out to be a cheat himself. But Bob is making this same analysis, and he doesn't want to feel guilty about cheating me, either. So he's not going to defect.”
And indeed, Bob makes the same analysis and also cooperates, although—most likely—they both don't consciously decide anything and both just behave honestly and trust each other to do the same. Maybe I have the emotions wrong—they could be motivated by a moral compass, by a sense of fairness, or by altruism towards the other person. In any case, dilemma solved.
Those guilty feelings come from inside our heads. Feelings of guilt are a societal pressure, one that works to varying degrees in each of us.
Moral pressure isn't the only thing we use to solve societal dilemmas. All of the considerations that make cooperation more attractive and defection less attractive are societal pressures. These include the rewards society directs towards cooperators and the penalties it directs towards defectors, the legal punishments society metes out to defectors, and the security measures that make defecting difficult to pull off and even more difficult to get away with. 7
Societal Dilemma: Stealing.
Society: Society as a whole.
Group interest: Respect property rights.
Competing interest: Get stuff without having to pay for it.
Group norm: Don't steal.
Corresponding defection: Steal.
To encourage people to act in the group interest, society implements these societal pressures:
Moral: People feel good about being honest and bad about stealing. People have been taught religious admonitions like “Thou shalt not steal.”
Reputational: Society shuns people who have a reputation for being thieves.
Institutional: Stealing is illegal, and society punishes thieves.
Security: Door locks, burglar alarms, and so on.
Of course, there's a lot more going on, and I'll discuss that in later chapters. The real world isn't this simplistic; any analysis of human interaction must take circumstances into account. If Alice is a tourist in a foreign country, Bob might cheat her anyway. If the dollar value of cheating is high enough, either Alice or Bob might decide that cheating is worth more than the negative feelings that result from cheating. In Chapter 3, I said that trust is contextual; all of that analysis applies here.
For most of us, it is more worthwhile to cooperate than to defect. It can be a better strategy for us, given what we know about the people who share in our dilemma. 8 And, for different and equally valid reasons, some of us find defection to be more valuable than cooperation. Not universally, not all of the time, but at that moment for that person and that particular trade-off. There are no actual dilemmas; there are just individual subjective risk trade-offs.
Here are six different ways societal pressures can reduce the scope of defection—which I'll illustrate using the example of Alice potentially cheating a merchant.
Pressures that increase the actual or perceived difficulty of defecting. Actual commerce usually doesn't happen inside sealed bags. Bob takes various additional security precautions to minimize the risk that Alice might cheat. Bob requires her to pay with
Alice might be thinking: “If I assume Bob will cooperate, I have two choices. If I cooperate, I'll get my purchase and feel good about cooperating with Bob. If I defect, I'll get my purchase for free but I'll feel guilty about cheating Bob. That guilty feeling is worse than giving up the money, so it makes sense for me to cooperate. On the other hand, if I assume Bob will cheat me, my two choices look like this: If I cooperate, Bob will take my money and I'll feel stupid and angry for cooperating with a cheat. If I defect, I won't get my purchase and will feel guilty for trying to cheat Bob. That stupid feeling for being cheated is a little worse than the guilty feeling for trying to cheat Bob—who turned out to be a cheat himself. But Bob is making this same analysis, and he doesn't want to feel guilty about cheating me, either. So he's not going to defect.”
And indeed, Bob makes the same analysis and also cooperates, although—most likely—they both don't consciously decide anything and both just behave honestly and trust each other to do the same. Maybe I have the emotions wrong—they could be motivated by a moral compass, by a sense of fairness, or by altruism towards the other person. In any case, dilemma solved.
Those guilty feelings come from inside our heads. Feelings of guilt are a societal pressure, one that works to varying degrees in each of us.
Moral pressure isn't the only thing we use to solve societal dilemmas. All of the considerations that make cooperation more attractive and defection less attractive are societal pressures. These include the rewards society directs towards cooperators and the penalties it directs towards defectors, the legal punishments society metes out to defectors, and the security measures that make defecting difficult to pull off and even more difficult to get away with. 7
Societal Dilemma: Stealing.
Society: Society as a whole.
Group interest: Respect property rights.
Competing interest: Get stuff without having to pay for it.
Group norm: Don't steal.
Corresponding defection: Steal.
To encourage people to act in the group interest, society implements these societal pressures:
Moral: People feel good about being honest and bad about stealing. People have been taught religious admonitions like “Thou shalt not steal.”
Reputational: Society shuns people who have a reputation for being thieves.
Institutional: Stealing is illegal, and society punishes thieves.
Security: Door locks, burglar alarms, and so on.
Of course, there's a lot more going on, and I'll discuss that in later chapters. The real world isn't this simplistic; any analysis of human interaction must take circumstances into account. If Alice is a tourist in a foreign country, Bob might cheat her anyway. If the dollar value of cheating is high enough, either Alice or Bob might decide that cheating is worth more than the negative feelings that result from cheating. In Chapter 3, I said that trust is contextual; all of that analysis applies here.
For most of us, it is more worthwhile to cooperate than to defect. It can be a better strategy for us, given what we know about the people who share in our dilemma. 8 And, for different and equally valid reasons, some of us find defection to be more valuable than cooperation. Not universally, not all of the time, but at that moment for that person and that particular trade-off. There are no actual dilemmas; there are just individual subjective risk trade-offs.
Here are six different ways societal pressures can reduce the scope of defection—which I'll illustrate using the example of Alice potentially cheating a merchant.
Pressures that increase the actual or perceived difficulty of defecting. Actual commerce usually doesn't happen inside sealed bags. Bob takes various additional security precautions to minimize the risk that Alice might cheat. Bob requires her to pay with
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