The Nice Person's Dilemma
Economists have a parable that
emphasizes the difficulties of cooperation. It is called the Prisoner's
Dilemma. Two men who have committed a crime are swiftly apprehended by the
police. They are taken to separate interrogation rooms. The prosecutor
doesn't have enough evidence to convict without a confession. If both
suspects deny any involvement in the crime, they could get off free. Each
man knows that his best strategy is denial, if he can be sure that the
other will do the same. Each has promised, ahead of time, never to rat on
his pal.
But is there honor among
thieves? The risk is obvious. Once nailed by the police, the
suspect in the other room may
opt for an opportunistic strategy, telling everything he knows in return
for a short, suspended sentence. An individual who remains loyal while his
partner defects suffers the greatest penalty. The cops know this and do
everything they can to sow seeds of doubt. The prisoners lose faith in one
another and confess at the same time. Both go to jail without any credit
for helping convict the other. From the cops' point of view, it's the best
possible outcome. From the prisoners' point of view it's the worst
possible outcome. The opportunistic strategy, which entails breaking a
promise, ends up making both prisoners worse off.
The economist Amartya Sen has
long argued that the Prisoner's Dilemma is really misnamed, because it
applies to many situations that have nothing to do with crime, situations
in which everyone would benefit from cooperation, but is afraid that
someone else will defect or cheat. An arms agreement is an obvious
example, or an effort to protect a common resource, such as a fish
population. These agreements work only if everyone cooperates. For
students, the best example is a study group. They can have more fun and
get more done by collaborating, but they feel ripped off when some people
show up just to copy down what the others have figured out.
We could call it the Nice
Person's Dilemma. A person does something to help another person. If the
other reciprocates, both will end up better off; if not, the nice person
loses. Nice gals and guys finish last. It has long been observed that such
dilemmas are easier to resolve among people who know each other well than
among strangers. Many communities come up with pretty effective ways of
governing access to common resources. Identification with a community is
important because it encourages members to care about others in the group,
emphasizing their common interests and restricting their contact with
outsiders.
A kind of virtuous circle
comes into play. Efforts to increase the probability of cooperation reward
the payoff to cooperation. As Jane Mansbridge puts it in her classic essay
"On the Relation of Altruism and Self-Interest:"
Arrangements that generate
some self-interest return to unselfish behavior create an
"ecological niche" that helps sustain that unselfish
behavior. Arrangements that make unselfishness less costly in narrowly
self-interested terms increase the degree to which individuals feel
they can afford to indulge their feelings of empathy and their moral
commitments, as well as their readiness to foster empathy and moral
commitments in their children.
The big question is how such
"ecological niches" for unselfishness are established and
defended.
Biologists explore similar
concerns when they consider the ways in which groups or teams, rather than
individuals, may compete. In some circumstances, the group or team with
the highest level of cooperation is likely to win.
Both biologists and economists
tend to assume that solidarity and care are completely natural within
families. As the previous chapter emphasized, however, there was nothing
natural about rules and laws that forced women to specialize in family
care. Now that women have gained rights similar to those of men, they are
entering a world in which they have more freedom to consider the penalties
imposed on unselfish behavior.
Consider the Good Parent's
Dilemma. Two people decide to rear a child, but one of them makes more
sacrifices than the other. Usually it's the mother who agrees to take time
away from her career to stay home with the baby, and to move wherever the
father's career dictates, so he can earn money to support the family.
"Later on," she might say, "It will be my turn. We'll put my
career first, and you can be the Good Parent." Sometimes, this
implicit agreement works just fine. Sometimes it doesn't, because it
involves one of those aspects of the marriage contract that is not
enforceable by law. The only thing the Good Parent can do if the other
parent refuses to take their turn is to end the relationship, which can
have unpleasant consequences for both parents and children.
This risk of default on an
implicit agreement is not limited to couple dynamics. It also faces
parents in their relationships with their children, which also involve an
implicit contract: we take care of you, and when you're grown-up you will
take care of us--if and when we really need your help. Most children
respect this implicit contract, though teenagers have been heard to mutter
"I didn't ask to be born into this family." They're right, of
course. Precisely because they feel they have not been given an individual
choice, some adult children default on responsibilities to parents. If and
when that happens, there's not much parents can do about it unless they
have enough wealth to threaten disinheritance.
Fairness and Care
Individual decisions are made
in a social context. What we want and how we will behave is strongly
affected by our perceptions of what other people want and how they are
likely to behave. Moral values and social norms probably evolved because
they encourage cooperative behavior that is productive in the long run.
Norms of fairness and reciprocity are surprisingly robust.
Economists have developed an
experiment that illustrates their impact. You can play it with your
friends more easily than most card games. Take two people aside and give
one of them ten one dollar bills. The person with the cash is required to
make a take-it-or-leave-it offer to share part of this money with the
other person. If the other person accepts the offer, they both can keep
the amounts agreed upon. If the other person refuses the offer, however,
the money must be returned. For instance, if I start out with the cash, I
might offer you three dollars. If you accept, you get three and I get
seven. If you refuse, neither of us gets anything.
It's called an Ultimatum Game.
Where a windfall is concerned--money that wasn't earned or deserved in any
way--most people think that a fifty/fifty split is fair. Furthermore, a
significant percentage will turn down a less-than-equal offer, even though
this leaves them worse off than they would have been had they accepted. In
the example above, many will turn down the three dollars offered, on the
grounds that it is unfair. They want a fair share, or they want nothing at
all, as if they intend to punish those who offer less.
When I have conducted this
experiment in my own classes, students have been skeptical, insisting that
there would be less concern for fairness if larger--and actual-- amounts
of money were involved. As one cynic put it, "You should change the
$10 to $10,000,000 and watch the fairness freaks crumble." But
Ultimatum Games have been conducted in many different places, and under
many different conditions, with very large sums of money. The results are
remarkably consistent.
Most of the economists who
conduct such experiments are interested in the way people think
strategically. I am more interested in how the players feel. Does concern
for other people's welfare affect their perception of their own payoff?
Think back to the Nice Person's Dilemma. If you love the person you are
helping, then you are less likely to be inhibited by fear that you will be
ripped off.
But love, affection, and
connection are aspects of the cooperation game that experimental
economists have largely neglected. Consider the maxim traditionally known
as the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
This is not exactly a rule of reciprocity. It's a rule of empathy. It asks
you to think about what it would feel like to be in the other
person's situation. It is related to another prescription for altruism:
"Love thy neighbor as thyself." In this context, it matters
whether or not you actually know who your neighbors are. It also matters
how much choice you have in determining who they will be. Some neighbors,
after all, may be more lovable than others.
