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中的一个中心问题。近年来，有相当多的文献发展并确定了有条件的合作，即如果其他人(预计)愿意这样做，那么合作的意愿以及作为基本动力的合作。这一概念植根于社会心理学(Kelley&Stahelski，1970)，催生了许多关于社会比较的经济学理论(参见Fehr&Schmidt，2006，以获得概述)。但是，人们会拿谁来比较呢？到目前为止，经济学文献主要关注与互动伙伴的比较，即潜在博弈论模型中的活跃参与者。然而，我们现实世界中的大多数互动都嵌入了更广泛的社会背景中。最近，有研究表明，与不活跃的旁观者进行比较的过程可能对个人的合作意愿起到至关重要的作用(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集团进行比较就能促进(集团内)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重点，超越直接互动伙伴的界限。但是，如果比较不限于互动伙伴，比较标准的选择就变成了一个信息搜索和选择问题。本研究整合了心理学关于社会比较的研究和经济学关于合作与公平的研究，以扩大经济情境中人类决策的比较过程的视角。具体地说，我们将考察：1.处于合作困境中的互动主体对外界社会比较的反应；2.分配博弈中外部主体寻求和回避哪些社会比较信息；3.做出公平判断时，外部主体寻求哪些社会比较信息。我们的研究旨在对经济情况下社会比较的前因、结果和心理过程提供有价值的见解，并最终为完善和发展社会比较和经济决策领域的现有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.