Allisons 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.

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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.

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. 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.

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. The tragedy of the commons is a type of replenishing resource management dilemma. The dilemma arises when members of a group share a common good.

A common good is rivalrous and non-excludable, meaning that anyone can use the resource but there is a finite amount of the resource available and it is therefore prone to overexploitation. The paradigm of the tragedy of the commons first appeared in an pamphlet by English economist William Forster Lloyd. According to Lloyd, "If a person puts more cattle into his own field, the amount of the subsistence which they consume is all deducted from that which was at the command, of his original stock; and if, before, there was no more than a sufficiency of pasture, he reaps no benefit from the additional cattle, what is gained in one way being lost in another.

But if he puts more cattle on a common, the food which they consume forms a deduction which is shared between all the cattle, as well that of others as his own, in proportion to their number, and only a small part of it is taken from his own cattle". The template of the tragedy of the commons can be used to understand myriad problems, including various forms of resource depletion. For example, overfishing in the s and s led to depletion of the previously abundant supply of Atlantic Cod. By , the population of cod had completely collapsed because fishers had not left enough fish to repopulate the species.

A social trap occurs when individuals or groups pursue immediate rewards that later prove to have negative or even lethal consequences. Stimuli that cause social traps are called sliding reinforcers, since they reinforce the behavior in small doses and punish it in large doses. An example of a social trap is the use of vehicles and the resulting air pollution. Viewed individually, vehicles are an adaptive technology that have revolutionized transportation and greatly improved quality of life.

But their current widespread use causes negative externalities. In many places air pollution continues unabated because the convenience of driving a car is immediate and the environmental costs are distant and often do not become obvious until much later. A perceptual dilemma arises during conflict and is a product of outgroup bias. In this dilemma, the parties to the conflict prefer cooperation while simultaneously believing that the other side would take advantage of conciliatory gestures. The prevalence of perceptual dilemmas in conflict has led to the development of two distinct schools of thought on the subject.

According to deterrence theory , the best strategy to take in conflict is to show signs of strength and willingness to use force if necessary. This approach is intended to dissuade attacks before they happen. Conversely, the conflict spiral view holds that deterrence strategies increase hostilities and defensiveness and that a clear demonstration of peaceful intentions is the most effective way to avoid escalation.

Because both countries had second strike capability , each side knew that the use of nuclear weapons would result in their own destruction. While controversial, MAD succeeded in its primary purpose of preventing nuclear war and kept the Cold War cold. Conciliatory gestures have also been used to great effect, in keeping with conflict spiral theory. For example, Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat 's visit to Israel during a prolonged period of hostilities between the two countries was well-received and ultimately contributed in the Egypt—Israel Peace Treaty.

Social dilemmas have attracted a great deal of interest in the social and behavioral sciences. Economists, biologists, psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists alike study behavior in social dilemmas. The most influential theoretical approach is economic game theory i. Game theory assumes that individuals are rational actors motivated to maximize their utilities. Utility is often narrowly defined in terms of people's economic self-interest. Game theory thus predicts a non-cooperative outcome in a social dilemma.

Although this is a useful starting premise there are many circumstances in which people may deviate from individual rationality, demonstrating the limitations of economic game theory. Biological and evolutionary approaches provide useful complementary insights into decision-making in social dilemmas. According to selfish gene theory, individuals may pursue a seemingly irrational strategy to cooperate if it benefits the survival of their genes.

The concept of inclusive fitness delineates that cooperating with family members might pay because of shared genetic interests.

It might be profitable for a parent to help their off-spring because doing so facilitates the survival of their genes. Reciprocity theories provide a different account of the evolution of cooperation. In repeated social dilemma games between the same individuals, cooperation might emerge because participants can punish a partner for failing to cooperate.

This encourages reciprocal cooperation. Reciprocity serves as an explanation for why participants cooperate in dyads , but fails to account for larger groups. Evolutionary theories of indirect reciprocity and costly signaling may be useful to explain large-scale cooperation. When people can selectively choose partners to play games with, it pays to develop a cooperative reputation.

Cooperation communicates kindness and generosity, which combine to make someone an attractive group member. Psychological models offer additional insights into social dilemmas by questioning the game theory assumption that individuals are confined to their narrow self-interest. Interdependence Theory suggests that people transform a given pay-off matrix into an effective matrix that is more consistent with their social dilemma preferences.

Attribution models offer further support for these transformations. Whether individuals approach a social dilemma selfishly or cooperatively might depend upon whether they believe people are naturally greedy or cooperative. Similarly, goal-expectation theory assumes that people might cooperate under two conditions: They must 1 have a cooperative goal, and 2 expect others to cooperate. Another psychological model, the appropriateness model, questions the game theory assumption that individuals rationally calculate their pay-offs.

Instead many people base their decisions on what people around them do and use simple heuristics , like an equality rule, to decide whether or not to cooperate. The logic of appropriateness suggests that people ask themselves the question: Studying the conditions under which people cooperate can shed light on how to resolve social dilemmas. The literature distinguishes between three broad classes of solutions—motivational, strategic, and structural—which vary in whether they see actors as motivated purely by self-interest and in whether they change the rules of the social dilemma game.

Motivational solutions assume that people have other-regarding preferences. There is a considerable literature on social value orientations which shows that people have stable preferences for how much they value outcomes for self versus others. Research has concentrated on three social motives: The first two orientations are referred to as proself orientations and the third as a prosocial orientation.

There is much support for the idea that prosocial and proself individuals behave differently when confronted with a social dilemma in the laboratory as well as the field. When there are conditions of scarcity, like a water shortage, prosocials harvest less from a common resource. Similarly prosocials are more concerned about the environmental consequences of, for example, taking the car or public transport.

Research on the development of social value orientations suggest an influence of factors like family history prosocials have more sibling sisters , age older people are more prosocial , culture more individualists in Western cultures , gender more women are prosocial , even university course economics students are less prosocial. However, until we know more about the psychological mechanisms underlying these social value orientations we lack a good basis for interventions. Another factor that might affect the weight individuals assign to group outcomes is the possibility of communication.

A robust finding in the social dilemma literature is that cooperation increases when people are given a chance to talk to each other. It has been quite a challenge to explain this effect. One motivational reason is that communication reinforces a sense of group identity. However, there may be strategic considerations as well.

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First, communication gives group members a chance to make promises and explicit commitments about what they will do. It is not clear if many people stick to their promises to cooperate. Similarly, through communication people are able to gather information about what others do.

On the other hand, this information might produce ambiguous results; an awareness of other people's willingness to cooperate may cause a temptation to take advantage of them. A second category of solutions are primarily strategic. In repeated interactions cooperation might emerge when people adopt a Tit for tat strategy TFT. TFT is characterized by first making a cooperative move while the next move mimics the decision of the partner. Thus, if a partner does not cooperate, you copy this move until your partner starts to cooperate.

Computer tournaments in which different strategies were pitted against each other showed TFT to be the most successful strategy in social dilemmas. TFT is a common strategy in real-world social dilemmas because it is nice but firm. Consider, for instance, about marriage contracts, rental agreements, and international trade policies that all use TFT-tactics.

It was written by series creator and showrunner Noah Hawley and directed by Adam Bernstein. The title refers to the paradox in logic known as the crocodile dilemma. Living their daily lives, the town's inhabitants, including zealous police Deputy Molly Solverson Allison Tolman , police officer and single father Gus Grimly Colin Hanks , and insecure insurance salesman Lester Nygaard Martin Freeman , are unaware that this man will impact their lives forever.

In January , a drifter named Lorne Malvo Billy Bob Thornton crashes a car at night on a wintry rural highway outside Bemidji, Minnesota , after hitting a deer, and cuts his forehead after banging it into the steering wheel. A nearly naked man jumps from the popped trunk and bolts through the snow into the woods. Malvo calmly watches as the man runs away and makes no attempt at pursuit.

In town, a put-upon insurance salesman named Lester Nygaard Martin Freeman runs into Sam Hess Kevin O'Grady , a former high school bully who intimidates Lester into accidentally running into a window and breaking his nose. At the hospital, Lester meets Malvo and tells him about Sam, and Malvo offers to murder him. Lester fails to respond, but Malvo goes to Sam's workplace, to get a glimpse of him, and later that night murders him at a strip club by throwing a knife into his head.

Lester meets Malvo in a motel restaurant and confronts him about the murder. Malvo tells Lester that if Lester does not stand up to "the boss [Lester] will get washed away". They also look into Sam's death. While they are questioning Sam's wife Gina Kate Walsh , Malvo calls the elder son pretending to be an attorney, and claims the younger brother inherited everything, leading the elder son to beat his brother with a hockey stick before Molly tackles him. The police learn that Lester was overheard discussing Sam with another man Malvo , at the hospital. Lester tries to impress his wife, Pearl Kelly Holden Bashar , by repairing the couple's washing machine, but he fails at it, and Pearl mocks him.

Lester, reaching his breaking point after years of her psychological abuse, hits her with a hammer and kills her.

A panicked Lester summons Malvo to help with the aftermath. Vern arrives at Lester's house to question him about Sam, but Malvo arrives soon afterward and fatally shoots Vern, but only after the latter has radioed for backup after discovering Pearl's body. Malvo disappears before Molly shows up, and Lester intentionally knocks himself out to make the killings look like a home invasion.