A framework for social motives

Abstract

In any complex social system, the choices of a single person often affect the outcomes of others. When one takes the others' outcomes into account in making choices, we say one is manifesting a social motive. We assume that an individual's social motives are manifested in his social preferences. Any theory of decision or choice requires information about preferences, and so in addition to attempting to clarify definitions of social motives, this study provides a framework for theories of social decision.To begin, we establish operational definitions for the motives of self-interest, self-sacrifice, altruism, aggression, cooperation, and competition. These definitions are based on the simple operators of summations and differences. Then we examine some supplementary motives involving proportionality operators. Next we eliminate the assumption that an individual has a fixed preference structure which is applied to all social choices. This leads to a focus on the specific distribution of consequences resulting in conditional motives; conditional motives reflect varying basic motives depending on whether the individual is ahead or behind. All these motives are represented graphically, and a correspondence matrix is given to illustrate the interrelationships among the motives.Finally, we investigate combinations of the motives since such composites are less restrictive and can better account for observed behavior. Linear combinations are interesting but still too restrictive. Conjunctive, disjunctive and lexicographic combinations offer useful possibilities for characterizing particular social motives. Complex combinations involving general nonlinear forms arise and some representative forms are explored. c+4 INTRODUCTIONIN ANY COMPLEX social system charac-I terized by a high degree of social interdependence, one's acts often have direct consequences for the outcomes of other members of the system. When an individual takes the outcomes of others into account in making a choice, we say that one is manifesting a social motive. There are, of course, many subtle and complicated ways in which others' outcomes may be taken into account and, while we will illustrate some of these, our primary goal in this paper will be to develop and explore a framework for social motives which can aid our understanding of social behavior as well as the social system in which we live. More than a decade ago, an important text on motivation stated that "one task for a psychology of motivation might be to provide a useful scheme for classification of KEY WORDS: social motives, cooperation and competition, interdependent preferences, social choice, indifference curves.' The basis for this paper was developed a t the specific wants that have much in common" (Atkinson, 1964, p. 6). In this paper, building on the work of McClintock (1972) and Griesinger and Livingston (19731, we shall attempt to specify precise meanings for some important social motives. Then we shall identify some of the interrelationships among, and implications of, these defini...

Experiments investigating cooperative types in humans: A complement to evolutionary theory and simulations

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Alternative approaches to equity: Dissonance reduction pro‐social motivation and strategic accommodation

“…In the next section of this paper, we will therefore briefly review a model of social motivation developed by McClintock, Messick and their colleagues (McClintock, 1972(McClintock, , 1976MacCrimmon and Messick, 1976) that defines motives as an actor's preferred distribution of own and other's outcomes, and strategies as behaviours that are instrumental in influencing other's behaviour so that one can achieve one's preferred outcomes. We will then consider whether equity as a pro-social motive can be differentiated from equity as a strategy in the service of other motives and how the existing empirical evidence relates to this distinction.…”