Social Dynamics and Trust

These flashcards cover key concepts regarding trust, cooperation, social dynamics, and the factors influencing prosocial behavior.

Trust

An evolutionary advantage that facilitates cooperation and forgiveness of unintentional errors.

Social Dilemma

A situation where individual rationality leads to collective irrationality, often requiring strategies to encourage cooperation.

Machiavellianism

A personality trait involving manipulation and exploitation of others, often correlated with defection in social dilemmas.

Social Reciprocity Norm

The expectation that people will respond to each other in similar ways, such as returning favors.

Bystander Effect

A phenomenon where individuals are less likely to offer help in an emergency when others are present.

Tragedy of the Commons

A situation where shared resources are overused and depleted due to individual self-interest.

• Often times, we are greedy because we don’t think people deserve things that we deserve, like the same grade

• The unfairness makes us feel bad about it

Prisoner's Dilemma

A scenario in which two individuals must choose between cooperation and defection, with varying outcomes based on mutual choices.

Tit for Tat Strategy

A strategy in game theory where a player responds to cooperation with cooperation and defection with defection.

Norm of Social Responsibility

The expectation that individuals should help those who depend on them.

Elevation

A feeling of gratitude and love experienced after observing acts of kindness or courage.

Collective Action Problem\n\n

A challenge where individuals must work together to achieve a common goal but may not cooperate due to self-interest.

Altruism\n\n

Selfless concern for the well-being of others, often leading to cooperative behaviors that may benefit the group.

Groupthink\n\n

A psychological phenomenon where the desire for harmony in a decision-making group leads to irrational or dysfunctional outcomes.

Social Identity Theory\n\n

A theory that suggests a person's identity is shaped by their membership in social groups, influencing behavior and attitudes.

Diffusion of Responsibility\n\n

A phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to take action when they believe others will, often seen in emergencies.

Do we want to be more trusting?

• Evolutionary advantage of trust

• Required for cooperation

• Allows for forgiveness of unintentional errors

How do different perceptions influence group conflict strategies?

1. Some percieve cooperation as obvious strategy, others defection

Why is it important to reframe problems in group conflicts?

Reframing helps avoid an all-or-nothing mindset.

- Encourages collaborative solutions rather than confrontational ones.

How do we avoid/resolve social dilemmas?

1. Keep the group small - If you have a group of 4 ppl, you are personally accountable and less anonymous

2. Regulate community action - morally or legally

3. Enable communication - having the situation explained, talking about the problem helps people cooperate

4. Change the payoff - make the cooperative strategy more attractive by adding incentives

5. Appear to altruistic norms

Hi vs. lo mac - personality variable

• both extremes are bad

• Golden balls example - high mac

Machiavellianism

1. Measures the degree to which people believe others can be manipulated

2. manipulator gets more of some kind of reward than they would have gotten without manipulating, while someone else gets less, at least within the immediate context

3. Correlated with defection on prisoner’s dilemma

4. Lawyers, psychiatrists, and social psychologists are more Machiavellian than accountants, surgeons, or natural scientists

   1. Because Lawyers, etc. have to know people and recognize their patterns well, they like to make new rules and break them

5. Hi Machs more likely to come from urban backgrounds

   1. Less familiar w ppl around them

Who teaches us to trust?

• Parents, friends, partners

• Society and media

  • At Rice, normal to leave things in places

Heritability of Trust

• 15% Heritable

  • Must be adaptable to situations, no sense for it to be highly heritable

  • Higher social cost of betrayal

Why did the toilet paper crisis occur during COVID?

• Normative influence - ppl are grabbing it so it must be good

Why are prisoner’s dilemmas worth studying?

• Experimental realism

  • These experiments are similar to the real world - they apply well outside the lab

  • We create our own environments, and we can change this

    • behavioral confirmation

      • Some people perceive cooperation as the obvious strategy

      • Some perceive defection as better strategy

      • Those who initially choose cooperation, encourage cooperation

        • ppl who choose defection elicit defection

    • Best Prisoner’s dilemma strategy is tit for tat

• ⁃ Maximizes team payoff/individual payoff

Prosocial behavior

action intended to benefit another, whether rewarded or not

Benevolence

Action to benefit another, no external reward

Pure altruism

Action to benefit another, no external or internal reward, doesn’t really exist in humans

pluralistic ignorance

nobody else is acting, so must not be big deal

ambiguous interpretations

is it really an emergency?

evaluation apprehension

we don’t want to overreact, use others as informational influence

Environmental conditions of helping

Ppl more likely to help when they’re feeling good

Chain of events for intervention:

• Notice the event

  • selective attention

• Perceive a need

  • emergencies are unusual, unexpected, sudden

  • clear threat of harm

  • harm will increase without intervention

  • victim can’t help themselves

  • effective intervention is possible

• Take personal responsibility

  • influencing factors:

    • verbal commitment: “I will help”

    • Means of accountability

    • Real or implied leadership

    • Feelings of competence in situation, ex: CPR training

• Weight costs and benefits

• Decide how to help

Why did that guy jump on the train tracks to save a stranger? Why is this even more surprising?

He has expertise on track safety, electrical engineer.

He left his children unattended to save the stranger

Smoke-filled room experiment

Experimenters filled a room with smoke and had confederates not do anything

subjects stayed in the room until they literally couldn’t see their paper

How does time pressure play into people’s likelihood to help?

more likely to help when not under time pressure

Darley and Batson study:

• split priests into those who primarily wanted to help ppl, and those who didn’t

• Split each group into those who were “late”, “on time”, and “early” to something across campus

• The situational variable, late vs early, predicted helping

  • late ppl helped far less,

  • early ppl helped far more

How does population density play into helpfulness?

ppl living in dense urban environments pay less attention to those around them, and are closer with them

What can I do in an emergency situation?

• Take responsibility - help or call an expert

• Be aware of “power of situation”

• Point out “helpers” - “you, call 911”

• Be courageous: you can earn people’s trust back, but you can’t save a dead person’s life.