Sustainable cooperation in small groups: dynamic interaction and the emergence of norms

Abstract

This paper addresses the formation of social norms of cooperation through interaction in repeated Public Goods Games, using novel multilevel techniques. Cooperation has traditionally been understood as the interplay of static factors such as shared social identity and pre-existing norms. This study investigates the dynamic emergence of cooperative norms

"Do your part: Stay apart": Collective intentionality and collective (in)action in US governor's COVID-19 press conferences

“…Collective intentionality might not only foster cooperation (Kirgil et al 2021;McClung et al 2017;Titlestad 2019), but also unintentionally create conflicting motivations.…”

“…The concept collective intentionality was developed by Searle (1990) and routinely studied in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Schweikard and Schmid 2013). The concept was later brought into the Cognitive and Social Sciences through studies of cognitive development (see for overview, Rakoczy 2017) and some experimental work (Kirgil et al 2021;McClung et al 2017;Titlestad 2019).…”

“…Collective intentionality has been operationalized differently via survey items (Kirgil et al 2021), problem-solving tasks and games (Warneken, Chen, and Tomasello 2006) or transcriptions of conversations (McClung et al 2017;Titlestad 2019). Recent experiments suggest that collective intentionality arising through spontaneous language usage in social interaction increases cooperation (Titlestad 2019;McClung et al 2017). Language can foster cooperation by simplifying coordination problems, defining norms, rules and punishment, or reducing costs of monitoring compliance (Smith 2010: 241).…”

“…To foster people's compliance and prosocial behavior, political leaders nurture these collective elements in public discourse. Recent findings suggest that people with higher collective intentionality show higher cooperation (Kirgil, Wittek and Postmes 2021;Titlestad 2019).…”

Cooperation sustainability in small groups: Exogenous and endogenous dynamics of the sustainability of cooperation

“…In contrast, research studying the endogenous process of cooperation focuses on the dynamic interaction in groups. Recent contributions advocate complementing current static explanations with a dynamic multilevel perspective on cooperation sustainability (Titlestad, 2019). According to the dynamic perspective, emergent group processes, such as the coevolution of social ties and cooperative behavior, or the inductive formation of shared social identities and related cooperation norms evolve during social interactions and substantially impact cooperation (Titlestad et al, 2019).…”