The Influence of Social Comparisons on Cooperation and Fairness

理解人类合作的决定因素是社会科学的一个中心问题。近年来，相当多的文献已经发展并确定了有条件的合作，即如果其他人（被期望）合作的意愿以及基本驱动力。这一概念根植于社会心理学（Kelley & Stahelski, 1970），激发了许多社会比较的经济理论（参见Fehr & Schmidt， 2006，概述）。但是人们拿谁来比较呢？到目前为止，经济学文献主要集中于对互动伙伴的比较，即基础博弈论模型中的活跃参与者。然而，我们在现实世界中的大多数互动都嵌入在更广泛的社会背景中。最近有研究表明，与不活跃的旁观者的比较过程可能对个人的合作意愿起着至关重要的作用（Engel & Rockenbach, 2011）。此外，Böhm和Rockenbach（2013）最近的一篇论文表明，仅仅将合作率与结构独立的群体进行比较，就能促进（群体内）合作。这些研究提供了强有力的证据，表明我们应该扩大我们的关注范围，超越直接互动伙伴的界限。但是，如果比较不局限于交互伙伴，那么比较标准的选择就变成了一个信息搜索和选择问题。本研究将社会比较的心理学研究与合作与公平的经济学研究相结合，扩大经济情境下人类决策比较过程的视角。具体来说，我们将调查1。在合作困境中相互作用的受试者如何对与局外人的社会比较作出反应；2. 分配博弈中外来者主体寻求和回避哪些社会比较信息；和3。被试在做出公平判断时寻求哪些社会比较信息。我们的研究旨在为社会比较在经济情境中的前因、后果和心理过程提供有价值的见解，并最终为完善和发展当前社会比较和经济决策领域的经济模型和理论提供基础。

Understanding the determinants of human cooperation is a central question in the social sciences. In recent years, a considerable literature has developed and identified conditional cooperation, i.e., the willingness to cooperate if others (are expected to) do so as well as a fundamental driving force. This concept, rooted in social psychology (Kelley & Stahelski, 1970), spirited many economic theories of social comparisons (see Fehr & Schmidt, 2006, for an overview). But whom do people compare to? Up to now the economic literature has primarily focused on comparisons to interaction partners, i.e. active players in the underlying game theoretic model. However, most of our real world interactions are embedded in a wider social context. Very recently it has been shown that comparison processes to inactive bystanders may play a crucial role for individuals¿ willingness to cooperate (Engel & Rockenbach, 2011). Furthermore, a recent paper by Böhm and Rockenbach (2013) shows that the mere comparison of cooperation rates to a structurally independent group promotes (intragroup) cooperation. These studies provide strong evidence that we should broaden our focus beyond the boundaries of the direct interaction partners. But, if comparisons are not restricted to interaction partners, the selection of comparison standards becomes an information search and selection problem. The proposed research integrates psychological research on social comparisons and economic research on cooperation and fairness, to enlarge the perspective of comparison processes for human decision making in economic situations. Specifically we will investigate 1. How subjects interacting in a cooperation dilemma react to social comparisons to outsiders; 2. Which social comparison information of outsiders subjects in an allocation game seek and which information they avoid; and 3. Which social comparison information subjects seek when making fairness judgments. Our research aims at providing valuable insights into the antecedents, consequences and psychological processes of social comparisons in economic situations and ultimately at providing the basis for a refinement and advancement of current economic models and theories in the domain of social comparisons and economic decision making.