Konflikt und Kooperation

- SVO is regarded as a trait which reflects how people evaluate outcomes for self and others and these differences affect cooperative behavior in situations of interdependence

- two opposing social value orientations are typically recogniced: a proself and a prosocial orientation

- the proself type is sometimes subdivided in an individualist and a competitive orientation 

- in social dilemmas individualists will strive to maximize their own outcome only; they will either help or harm others if these actions increase their potential outcome; they only seek to fulfil their own goals 

- competitors will strive to maximize their own gains relative others' gains; they view disagreements as win-loose situations 

- prosocials tend to be natural cooperators; they will strive to maximize joint outcomes and equality in outcomes, or sometimes even others' outcomes (altruism), and they seek win-win situations to disagreements

-  the prosocial orientation is sometimes considered to comprise two subtypes

-  Kurzban and Houser (2001) and Perugini and Galluci (2001) distinguish altruistic from reciprocal cooperators

- Altruists cooperate because they are more concerned with a positive outcome for others than for themselves; they are likely to remain cooperative, even when their partners defect

-  Reciprocators cooperate when they know their cooperative acts will be returned; they respond cooperatively to positive acts from their partners, but they quit cooperating in response to negative acts. thus, in addition to valuing maximization of joint outcomes, prosocial reciprocators also value equality in outcome

- two main contextual moderators of the relation between SVO and cooperative behaviour 

- signals of trustworthiness increase the level of cooperation, especially among prosocials

--> People with a natural inclination to cooperate are at the same time vulnerable to being exploited. As most people want to avoid the latter, cues signalling trustworthiness of others are likely to constitute a major determinant of the level of cooperation of prosocials. 

- incentives to cooperate will increase the level of cooperation, especially for proselfs

--> Incentives to cooperate In many exchange situations with repeated interaction, cooperation is strategically the best choice, as the collective gain of mutual cooperation often far outweighs the gain from mutual defection. Contextual incentives that signal that the outcome of noncooperation is small compared to the potential (long-term) benefits which can be obtained by cooperating are likely to induce proselfs to cooperate. In this case, the cooperative goal is aligned with the proself’s pursuit of self-interest. (e.g. when feedback is provided, tit-for-tat strategy, creation of strong group identity towards cooperation)

- they proposed that expectations mediate the influence of SVO on cooperation; can be explaned in two ways 

1) individuals who exhibit cooperative behaviour might justify their own behaviour by expecting cooperation from others 

2) individuals assume that others are similar to themselves and therefore expect cooperation 

Results: 

- medium-sized overall correlation between SVO and cooperation (r=.317) 

- large overall correlation between expectations and cooperation (r=.626) 

- after fitting a structural equation model to the pooled meta-analytic correlation matrix: 

--> direct effect (SVO --> COOP) remained significant but decreased in magnitude compared with the meta-analytical estimate of the effect size 

--> indirect effect of SVO on COOP via EXP was statistically significant 

--> they could provide evidence for partial mediation

--> prosocials expect significantly more cooperation from their partner then proselfs 

--> no difference between prosocials and proselfs on how far expectations have an influence on cooperative behavior

- respondents are required to evaluate pairs of outcomes for self and an unknown other, and to indicate the most preferred pair

- majority of existing research reviewed here has used the nine-item, triple dominance decomposed measure of SVO, which distinguishes between a cooperative, individualistic, and competitive orientation. Respondents are classified into one of
these three orientations if they make six out of nine choices consistent with one orientation

- An alternative decomposed game is the ring measure of SVO. It requires respondents to evaluate two pairs of outcomes, 24 consecutive times. The pairs of own–other outcomes are derived from points on a circle with a fixed radius. Respondents are classified if 60% of their choices are consistent with one specific social value orientation

Reliability: test–retest coefficients in the range of about 60–75% (moderate, but sufficiently high); situational stability: mixed results --> sometimes priming didn't show an effect; sometimes free of social desirability, sometimes not 

Validity: 

- Content: measures SVO as a categorical variable --> some respondents are not classified --> loss of data(10%); only three SVOs are presented in the set of outcome distribution (altruistic is not in there) 

- Convergent and discriminant validity: overlap between different techniques for measuring SVO is not yet firmly established --> possible overlap with judgmental measurement technique (.67); prosocials adhere more so universalism, but they didn't differe with respect to benevolence, fairness plays a more important role in prosocials' motivation to cooperate, trust and SVO are not correlated (not clear --> further research needed); apart from that: scant research e.g. SVO and personality

- ecological: resemblance to operationalization of dependent variable in most experimental research --> has also been used in real life social dilemmas (e.g. negotiations) --> credible and ecologically meaningful prosocial-proself distinction

- Trust = psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behaviour of another

- interdependence perspective on trust: trust is relevant to cooperation in situations of

(a) social interdependence that

(b) contain some degree of conflict of interest

- influences expectations towards cooperation of other person --> trust promotes cooperation in situations of conflicting interests 

- cooperation always bears the possibility of getting exploited --> especially in one-time games 

- degree of confliciting interests may affect the relation between trust and cooperation --> trust may even be more predictive of behavior in situations involving a larger, compared to smaller, conflict of interests 

- in situations with less conflict cooperation is more influenced by self-serving motives like impression management and maintaining social ties

- if someone in a high conflict situation shows trust the counterpart can be sure that it's out of benevolent motives --> strong predictor for cooperative behavior