Progress in Understanding Choices When Individual and Collective Interests Clash

This volume (see record 1993-98342-000) is an ideal one to be published in the International Series in Experimental Social Psychology because it is both truly international in terms of its contributors and classic experimental social psychology in the nature of the topic and the methodologies described. The authors represent many countries, but they address the age-old problem of social dilemmas in very similar fashion, primarily with well-controlled laboratory experiments. Each chapter includes some paraphrase of the definition of a social dilemma and its essential characteristics; for example, "situations in which private interests are at odds with the collective interests" or more operationally "a situation in which two or more persons receive a higher payoff for a competitive choice than for a cooperative choice- no matter what the other members choose-but all members are better off if all cooperate than if all compete". The chapters in this volume address a wonderful array of issues that have arisen in this area of research. These include the role of environmental uncertainty (how much is available) and social uncertainty (what or how much will other people choose), perceived self-efficacy in contributing to a public good, social orientations or motivational factors, the effects of asymmetries in outcomes, communication opportunities, intragroup versus intergroup incentives, and conditions that lead people to choose to alter the structure of the dilemma itself by imposing sanctioning systems or selecting leaders to make decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)