Sequential Choice in a Step-Level Public Goods Dilemma: The Effects of Criticality and Uncertainty

A social dilemma is a situation in which members of a group or organization are faced with a conflict between two choices: maximize personal interests (defection) or maximize collective interests (cooperation). It is generally more profitable to defect, but if all do so, all are worse off than if all choose to cooperate. Previous research indicate that criticality and uncertainty affect the likelihood of cooperation. The more a member perceives that her choice is critical (has a significant impact on the outcome), the greater the likelihood of cooperation; conversely, the greater the uncertainty about the outcome, the lower the likelihood of cooperation. A sequential social dilemma paradigm was developed to manipulate criticality and uncertainty systematically. Using college students as subjects, two experiments were conducted. In both experiments (based on four- and six-person groups), criticality interacted with uncertainty: When criticality was high, cooperation decreased with uncertainty; but when criticality was low, there was a slight increase of cooperation rates with uncertainty. Several hypotheses are proposed to explain these results.