Cooperation, Motivation and Social Balance

Steven Bosworth, Tania Singer and Dennis Snower

No 11131, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper examines the reflexive interplay between individual decisions and social forces to analyze the evolution of cooperation in the presence of "multi-directedness", whereby people's preferences depend on their psychological motives. People have access to multiple, discrete motives. Different motives may be activated by different social settings. Inter-individual differences in dispositional types affect the responsiveness of people's motives to their social settings. The evolution of these dispositional types is driven by changes in the frequencies of social settings. In this context, economic policies can influence economic decisions not merely by modifying incentives operating through given preferences, but also by influencing people's motives (thereby changing their preferences) and by changing the distribution of dispositional types in the population (thereby changing their motivational responsiveness to social settings).

Keywords: Motivation; Reflexivity; Cooperation; Social dilemma; Endogenous preferences; Dispositions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C72 D01 D03 D62 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-gth and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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