Societal Membership, Score Status, and Game Behavior: A Phenomenological Analysis

Abstract

Appartenance sociale, bilan relatif des gains acquis e t comportement de jcu. Anahse pbbome'nologique. -Etude des prtftrences, des raisons et du comportement reel de choix de sujets belges et amMcains dans une tiche qui laisse la possibilitt de se comporter cooptrativement ou competitivement. La tiche utiliske est un jeu & somme non-nulle dont la matrice est structurte de telle sorte que Yon puisse diffkrencier deux objectifs parmi trois possibles : maximiser son propre gain (ou le gain conjoint des deux partenaires) ou bien maximiser la dX&ence entre son propre gain et celui de l'autre. Les Auteurs ont compart I 5 dyades de sujets belges et 15 dyades de sujets amkricains, jouant en IOO essais. Les rhultats montrent que le choix reel des sujets est trks semblable d'une culture a l'autre et que, dans chaque culture, il vacie selon que les gains d6ja acquis par un sujet sont supkrieurs, infbrieurs ou Cgaux B ceux du partenaire, au moment du choix.Enfin, on note que, bien qu'aucune difftrence marquee n'apparaisse dans le comportement rtel, il y a des diffkrences sensibles d'une culture & l'autre dans les raisons invoqukes par les sujets pow justifier leurs prtfkences : ces diff&ences sont encore plus apparentes si on tient tgalement compte de l'ttat relatif des gains dtja acquis par un slijet par rapport B son partenaire. En gtntral, les sujets belges ont tendance a justifier leur prkfkrence pour la compttition par des raisons de competition; les sujets amkricains, surtout quand ils ont l'avantage, par dcs raisons relatives & leur gain personnel. Cette dernike rbction est " irrationnelle " dans la prCsente tiche puisque la preftrence pour une attitude coophtive permet de maximiser son propre gain.

Expanding the analysis of social orientations by reference to the sequential–temporal structure of situations

“…It is intuitively plausible to interpret choices in laboratory games, for example, the Prisoner's Dilemma in Table 1, as reflecting various social motives or orientations, such as cooperation, competition, and fairness. Our intuitions are confirmed by McClintock's evidence about the reasons subjects give for preferring certain pairs of outcomes from such games (McClintock, 1972;McClintock & McNeel, 1966). However, as is well known (e.g.…”

Social Value Orientation

“…As discussed earlier in this paper, the emergence of the SVO construct was triggered by the observation that most people often do not attempt to maximize the experimenter-defined payoff when interacting with others in strategic situations (McClintock & McNeel, 1966a, 1966b, 1966c, 1967; Messick & Thorngate, 1967). The pattern of results obtained in these studies led Messick and McClintock (1968) to the elemental assumption of three distinct goals that guide behavior in experimental games: maximize own gain (individualistic), maximize relative gain (competitive), and maximize joint gain (cooperative).…”

“…The explicit assumption that people enter situations of interdependence with individual goals that may lead to different behavior in the same interdependent situation was stated and studied by Deutsch (1960) who proposed three motivational orientations: cooperative, individualistic, and competitive. This terminology was later adopted by Messick and McClintock (1968) in their motivational theory of choice behavior that was stimulated by a series of studies showing that people do not strictly endeavor to maximize their own payoffs when making choices in interdependent contexts but rather tend to take into account the other player’s payoff as well (McClintock & McNeel, 1966a, 1966b, 1966c, 1967; Messick & Thorngate, 1967). In this theory, the three motivations identified by Deutsch were operationally defined as the goals to maximize joint gains (cooperative), maximize own gain (individualistic), and maximize relative gain (competitive).…”

Predicting intergroup fairness and ingroup bias in the minimal group paradigm

“…McClintock, 1972;MacCrimmon and Messick, 1976;Kelley and Thibaut, 1978). Within this theoretical framework it was initially assumed, and subsequently empirically established that: (1) in settings of outcome interdependence, individuals vary in terms of the likelihood they will prefer one self-other allocation rule over another (Messick and McClintock, 1968); (2) such rule or value preferences are relatively stable within individuals (Kuhlman, Camac and Cunha, 1986); (3) individuals' explanations of their own choice behaviour is consistent with their actual own-other choices (McClintock and McNeel, 1966;Knight and Dubro, 1984); and (4) social values interact with the nature of the interdependence structure of relationships and expectations held concerning other's likely behaviours to influence choice behaviour (Kuhlman and Marshello, 1975;McClintock and Liebrand, 1988).…”