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Beyond Altruism: Sociological Foundations of Cooperation and Prosocial Behavior

August 2015
Annual Review of Sociology 41(1):150504162558008

Authors:

University of South Carolina

In explaining the sources of cooperation and prosocial behavior, psychologists, behavioral economists, and biologists often focus on factors internal to the individual, such as altruistic motivations, other-regarding preferences, and prosocial emotions. By contrast, sociologists typically emphasize social forces external to the individual, including norms, reputation systems, and social networks. Here we review evidence for these rules, reputations, and relations, showing that they have powerful and pervasive effects on cooperation and prosocial behavior.Our discussion highlights two emergent themes of the reviewed literature. First, although these classes of sociological mechanisms typically promote cooperation, their presence can also create ambiguity for individuals regarding the reasons for their own and others' prosocial acts, and that ambiguity can undermine future prosociality in subsequent settings where the mechanisms are absent. Second, altruistic preferences and social mechanisms often interact, such that the causal significance of altruism is attenuated where these mechanisms are present.

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SO41CH10-Simpson-Willer ARI 20 April 2015 13:23

Beyond Altruism: Sociological

Foundations of Cooperation

and Prosocial Behavior

Brent Simpson1and Robb Willer2

1Department of Sociology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208;

email: bts@sc.edu

2Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305;

email: willer@stanford.edu

Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2015. 41:10.1–10.21

The Annual Review of Sociology is online at

soc.annualreviews.org

This article’s doi:

10.1146/annurev-soc-073014-112242

2015 by Annual Reviews.

Keywords

norms, status, reputation, networks, social dilemmas, collective action

Abstract

In explaining the sources of cooperation and prosocial behavior, psycholo-

gists, behavioral economists, and biologists often focus on factors internal to

the individual, such as altruistic motivations, other-regarding preferences,

and prosocial emotions. By contrast, sociologists typically emphasize social

forces external to the individual, including norms, reputation systems, and

social networks. Here we review evidence for these rules, reputations, and

relations, showing that they have powerful and pervasive effects on coopera-

tion and prosocial behavior. Our discussion highlights two emergent themes

of the reviewed literature. First, although these classes of sociological mecha-

nisms typically promote cooperation, their presence can also create ambigu-

ity for individuals regarding the reasons for their own and others’ prosocial

acts, and that ambiguity can undermine future prosociality in subsequent set-

tings where the mechanisms are absent. Second, altruistic preferences and

social mechanisms often interact, such that the causal signiﬁcance of altruism

is attenuated where these mechanisms are present.

10.1

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Social dilemma:

a situation in which

individuals’

self-interested

behaviors lead to

collectively suboptimal

outcomes;

synonymous with

collective action

problem

Cooperation:

an individual behavior

that beneﬁts a group

or collective

Trust: an individual’s

expectation that an

alter will act in a

benign or cooperative

way when the alter has

an incentive to act

otherwise

Prosocial behavior:

an individual behavior

that beneﬁts one or

more others

INTRODUCTION

Why do people cooperate in situations in which they could beneﬁt more through selﬁshness?

Why do people behave generously, often making great personal sacriﬁces in order to help

others? Why do people behave in trustworthy ways, when they could proﬁt more by exploiting

dependent partners? In situations such as these an opposition exists between what is best for one-

self versus what is best for others. Because of the fundamental nature of that conﬂict—reﬂecting

the often divergent consequences of egoism and sociality—answers to these questions offer

important insights into understanding the microfoundations of social order.

Conﬂicts between individual self-interest and collective rationality are not only fundamental,

but also ubiquitous, as these tensions appear frequently in the course of everyday social life. Ex-

amples of such social dilemmas range from mundane to world-changing; individuals face these

conﬂicting interests as they develop committed romantic relationships, form productive work-

place collaborations, and broker economic exchanges. At the macro level social dilemmas also

must be overcome as nations negotiate trade agreements, citizens mobilize political movements,

and nations confront global challenges such as climate change. In all these cases, cooperation is

plagued by a fundamental and recurring conﬂict, with the prospect of group harmony and pro-

ductivity pushing parties together, but greed and distrust pulling them apart. Groups can ﬂourish

if their constituent members move beyond narrow self-interest, achieve mutual trust, and invest

in collective endeavors. But groups can also founder where individuals fail to overcome these

obstacles.

Although rooted in philosophy, all the social sciences have confronted the Hobbesian problem

of order, with each offering characteristic solutions. Where political scientists have traditionally

emphasized the role of government and formal institutions, economists have focused on the

functions of markets and competition, and psychologists have studied altruistic motivations

and emotions such as empathy and gratitude. By contrast, sociologists have emphasized in-

formal, interpersonal mechanisms such as relationships, norms, hierarchies, shared values, and

solidarity.

A large and prominent literature on social dilemmas, emphasizing the impact of individual-level

factors on cooperation and prosocial behavior, has recently emerged in psychology (e.g., Batson

2011), behavioral economics (Gintis et al. 2003), and evolutionary biology (Sober & Wilson 1999).

For instance, developmental psychologists (e.g., Eisenberg et al. 2002) have linked variation in

prosocial behavior to personality and prosocial emotions, such as empathy and sympathy. Arguably,

the most active and long-standing research program on individual-level predictors of cooperation

and prosocial behavior has dealt with social value orientations, stable preferences for how valued

outcomes are divided between oneself and others (Balliet et al. 2009, van Lange et al. 2014). In this

literature, prosocials place greater weight on others’ welfare than do proselfs and thus are more

likely to act prosocially in a range of domains. Related work, mainly from behavioral economics,

has distinguished strong reciprocators—those inclined to cooperate with others and punish those

who do not—from their more self-interested counterparts (Fehr and Gintis 2007; cf. Eriksson

et al. 2014).

Whereas these literatures typically locate the sources of cooperation and prosocial behavior

within individuals—in personality, emotions, motivations, and preferences—sociological work

views cooperation and prosocial behavior as heavily impacted by factors outside individuals.

Of particular note, sociologists have focused on (a) prevailing norms and their enforcement,

(b) the perceptions and rank of individuals in groups, and (c) the character and structure of

relations connecting individuals. These uniquely interpersonal mechanisms—rules, reputations,

and relations—are the focus of our review.

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Trustworthiness: an

individual’s motivation

to honor, rather than

exploit, another’s trust

SOCIOLOGICAL MECHANISMS OF SOCIAL ORDER

How much cooperation would we observe on the basis of altruistic motivations and preferences

alone? How generously would people act if they were not socially embedded, but placed in anony-

mous, decontextualized settings devoid of relationships or norms, with only their trust and concern

for strangers to motivate their prosociality? Although behavior in such a social vacuum might seem

impossible to realize, in fact we have some insight into it in the form of laboratory experiments

on social dilemmas, in which people interact with anonymous strangers in settings where all

participants must choose between maximizing their own or the group’s welfare.

And what happens in this social vacuum? The strong tendency in these settings is for costly

contributions to collective endeavors to begin at moderately high levels but then quickly decline

over time as more generous individuals withdraw their contributions to avoid exploitation from

their more selﬁsh counterparts (Ostrom 2000, Sell & Wilson 1991). Although often criticized as

artiﬁcial, experiments in which social context is deliberately minimized in fact tell us much about

society. At the most basic level, the results of these studies in decontextualized settings tell us

that something else is necessary, that high levels of cooperation cannot be sustained merely on

the basis of the preferences and generalized trust that people carry around within them. Rather,

the micro-level manifestations of social order—cooperation, trust, and prosocial behavior among

individuals—require also the operation of mechanisms embedded in social settings. They are more

than the direct products of individuals’ altruism.1

The review that follows presents evidence for three broad classes of social mechanisms—

rules, reputations, and relations—and how they can promote cooperation and prosocial behavior.

Mechanisms of this sort are critical for understanding the foundations of social order because

individual-level factors are likely insufﬁcient for large-scale collective efforts, building and main-

taining trust and trustworthiness, controlling rates of antisocial behavior, and encouraging helping

and volunteering. We conclude by highlighting two themes that emerged from our review. First,

these mechanisms operate primarily by bringing the behaviors of more self-interested individuals

in line with group goals. Second, because it is often unclear whether these actions are produced by

underlying motivations or social mechanisms, these mechanisms introduce ambiguity regarding

the motivations of individuals who cooperate or behave prosocially. Thus, although social forces

are critical for fostering high levels of cooperation, their presence also creates signiﬁcant uncer-

tainty about whether that cooperation results from internal motivations or external inﬂuence. In

this way, individuals implicitly trade much of their ability to accurately discern their own and

others’ character in return for more reliable, harmonious, and productive group living.

RULES

Perhaps no concept has been as closely linked with sociology as norms. Norms were central to

early sociological theories of social order and especially prominent in the work of Durkheim

[1982(1895)], who viewed norms and the sanctioning of counternormative behavior as central to

moral order and social solidarity. But the ﬁeld has maintained a discontented relationship with

the concept of norms for decades, as exempliﬁed by Wrong’s (1961) critique of the “oversocial-

ized” model of the actor that predominated mid-twentieth-century sociology. Although interest

in norms fell out of favor partly with the demise of structural functionalism, norms and their

1Many laboratory studies of cooperation take exactly this tack, introducing mechanisms thought to impact behavior in real-

world contexts into a highly controlled setting in order to rigorously assess their isolated effects. We review several studies of

this type below

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enforcement are once again central to the explanation of cooperation and prosocial behavior in

sociology and beyond.

Broadly speaking, norms may be categorized as either descriptive or injunctive (Cialdini et al.

1990). Descriptive norms are simply regularities of behavior, what most people do in a given situ-

ation, whereas injunctive norms are behavioral expectations that are backed by (social or material)

sanctions. Research shows that descriptive norms can have large effects on prosocial behavior. For

example, a ﬁeld experiment by Schultz et al. (2007) found that providing households with infor-

mation about typical levels of electricity usage for their neighborhood led households to assimilate

to the perceived norm in the weeks that followed. Other ﬁeld experiments show that descriptive

norms can spill over to impact behavior in other, associated domains. Keizer et al. (2008) found

that when a descriptive norm violated a corresponding injunctive norm, such as when grafﬁti or the

sounds of illegal ﬁreworks were prevalent in a public space, passersby were more likely to violate

other social rules, such as prohibitions against littering and theft. Thus, mere perception of what

is typical is sufﬁcient to shape whether individuals engage in prosocial or antisocial behavior.

Norm Enforcement

Most recent work on how norms impact cooperation has focused on injunctive norms, especially

when and why people enforce them (Benard 2012, Horne 2009). Some of this research, traceable to

Hobbes, focuses on formal, or top-down, mechanisms of norm enforcement, whereby a centralized

authority or institution administers rewards or punishments to group members (Hechter 1988).

But the bulk of recent research has focused on bottom-up, informal sanctions among peers (Horne

2009). Although top-down and bottom-up enforcement mechanisms differ in fundamental ways

(see Kitts 2006), the administration of either generally poses its own social dilemma, or second-

order free rider problem (Oliver 1980): Rational egoists would prefer to let others shoulder the

costs of establishing and maintaining the sanctioning system or of informally monitoring and

sanctioning fellow group members. Thus, the enforcement of cooperative norms can itself pose a

collective action problem.

Early experiments by Yamagishi (e.g., 1986, 1988) found that people facing a collective action

readily contribute to the provision of a centralized system designed to sanction noncontributors.

Similarly, Ostrom et al. (1992) studied peer sanctioning in the context of common pool resources,

ﬁnding that people were willing to pay to punish fellow group members who free rode and that

these sanctions increased cooperative behaviors, especially when coupled with verbal commu-

nication between group members, a point we return to below. More recent work in behavioral

economics (Fehr & G¨

achter 2002) extends these earlier ﬁndings, showing that people are willing

to take on material costs to sanction others even when there is no possibility of future interaction.

The key message of this line of research is that people are willing to pay to reward those who con-

tribute and punish those who do not (for reviews, see Fehr & Gintis 2007, Shinada & Yamagishi

2008). Thus, groups can readily overcome the second-order free rider problem that characterizes

norm enforcement.

At ﬁrst blush, this empirical research on norms and enforcement might appear in line with

classic sociological claims that the presence of norms necessarily goes hand in hand with high

levels of cooperation. Yet there are important limits to norms and sanctions for collective welfare.

First, norms might persist even when group members no longer privately support them, as shown

by research on pluralistic ignorance (Prentice & Miller 1993). The stability of such unpopular

norms can be sustained in part by false enforcement processes, in which group members not only

conform to a norm they perceive to have popular backing, but also enforce conformity to the

norm in an effort to signal the sincerity of their compliance (Centola et al. 2005, Willer et al.

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2009). Further, norms may emerge that support self-interested rather than cooperative behaviors

(Homans 1974, Kitts 2006, Miller 1999). There is even evidence that group members will punish

or ostracize those who give above normative levels (Herrmann et al. 2008, Irwin & Horne 2013,

Parks & Stone 2010). Finally, peer sanctions may be difﬁcult to coordinate and can therefore

result in either more or less sanctioning than is necessary to discourage further noncooperation,

or they can spark cycles of recrimination as punishment is met with retaliatory counterpunishment

(Nikiforakis 2008). As a result of these costs, material sanctions between peers can lead to relatively

low increases in overall welfare.

Emergence of Norms

Findings regarding the negative effects of sanctions pose an interesting puzzle. As Ostrom (2000,

p. 138) notes, “in all known self-organized resource governance regimes that have survived for

multiple generations, participants invest resources in monitoring and sanctioning the actions of

each other so as to reduce the probability of free riding.” But how can this be so if peer sanctioning

systems pose all the problems just described? Part of the answer to this puzzle can be discerned

from important differences in how researchers have typically studied norm enforcement versus

how norms emerge and become enforced in real-world groups.

First, in real-world collective action groups, norms and expectations generally emerge via

communication among group members (Ostrom 2000). Meta-analyses show that communication

greatly increases cooperation in collective action settings (Balliet 2010, Sally 1995). One reason

communication is so important is that it allows group members to create collective expectations

about who should do what (e.g., how much members should contribute) and the consequences

for not meeting, or exceeding, those expectations (including punishments or rewards and who

should administer them). As evidence, Ostrom et al. (1992) found that the ability to punish

fellow group members yielded only marginally better outcomes than a control condition, once

sanctioning costs were taken into account. But groups who could communicate fared substantially

better, both when peer punishment was possible and even, to a somewhat lesser extent, when it

was not. Communication permitted group members to coordinate expectations about how much

each should contribute and, in cases where sanctions were possible, how much those who did not

meet the group’s expectations would be sanctioned. Other work addresses the collective selection

of particular institutional rules in collective action groups (Eriksson & Strimling 2012, Sutter

et al. 2010). Consistent with evidence from ﬁeld work by Ostrom and colleagues, these studies

ﬁnd that institutions are more effective when they emerge endogenously via the choices of group

members.

Centralized Sanctions and Leadership

In contrast to most recent experimental studies of norms and sanctions, real-world collective action

groups generally place restrictions on who can punish whom for violating norms (e.g., Ostrom

2000). For instance, the responsibility for monitoring and sanctioning others’ behaviors might be

alternated among group members (O’Gorman et al. 2009) or based implicitly on who has more

power or inﬂuence in the group (e.g., Przepiorka & Diekmann 2013). Perhaps most commonly,

the ability to sanction others’ behaviors is often vested in an explicitly designated leader (van Vugt

& De Cremer 1999).

A recent lab-in-the-ﬁeld experiment addressed the effectiveness of elected or appointed leaders

endowed with the power to impose costly sanctions on group members (Grossman & Baldassarri

2012). Results showed that group monitors willingly sacriﬁced their own endowments to sanction

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Trusting behavior:

acting in a way that

leaves one open to

exploitation by

another

Trustworthy

behavior: acting

in a cooperative way

toward another when

one has an incentive to

do otherwise

group members, even though the monitors’ welfare was not tied to cooperation levels in the

group. Consistent with theories of legitimacy ( Johnson et al. 2006) as well as ﬁeld research on

collective action groups (Ostrom 2000), how monitors came to occupy the role affected their

effectiveness. Elected monitors were most effective at garnering contributions, as group members

responded more strongly to sanctions meted out by elected rather than appointed monitors. More

generally, placing sanctioning capacity in the hands of a single group member facilitated the success

of collective action while avoiding problems with peer sanctioning, such as the coordination of

punishment and retaliatory sanctioning.

How Institutions Can Undermine Trust and Prosocial Motivations

The above research shows that although norms and sanctions are not always functional, they

often play an important role in promoting cooperation and prosocial behavior in groups. More-

over, prior work ﬁnds that norms and institutions are generally more effective when they emerge

endogenously and in settings where enforcement responsibility is centralized. But rules and insti-

tutions can also undermine cooperation in groups, by weakening prosocial values or even altering

cultural conceptions of what is considered moral or prosocial. As Bowles (2008) argues, institutions

or “policies designed for self-interested citizens” might actually end up creating self-interested

citizens. This can happen via a number of different mechanisms. For instance, institutions that

invoke extrinsic incentives for prosocial behavior alter individuals’ perceptions about what mo-

tivates others, inadvertently signaling that self-interest is normal. Such consequences have been

demonstrated in response to the use of contracts. Although contracts reduce the risk inherent in

many types of exchanges, they can also lead parties to inaccurately attribute an exchange partner’s

benign behavior to the contract itself. Once the contract is removed, studies ﬁnd that trust is lower

than it would have been had there never been a contract (Malhotra & Murnighan 2002).

The damaging effects of contracts are not limited to trust. Laboratory experiments have found

that, compared with participants who were never engaged by contracts, those who ﬁrst took part in

contractually backed exchanges were more likely to exploit the trusting behaviors of new partners

in subsequent interactions not governed by contracts (Kuwabara 2015, Simpson & Eriksson 2009).

The researchers attribute this effect to a self-perception dynamic (Bem 1972), whereby a person

attributes one’s own trustworthy behavior to the presence of the contract, leading to less trust-

worthy behavior once the external constraint is removed. More generally, incentivizing prosocial

behavior via the use of rewards or punishments to condition certain behaviors can undermine

intrinsic motivation.

Other research considers the impact of more macro-level institutions and organizations on

prosocial behavior. Much of this work deals with whether and how markets undermine civic

virtues and other-regarding preferences, a long-standing question in sociology (Fourcade & Healy

2007). In his classic comparative study of blood donation in Britain and the United States, Titmuss

(1970) argued that monetary compensation for donations might paradoxically reduce the available

supply by undermining prospective donors’ intrinsic motivations to give blood. A ﬁeld experiment

partially supports Titmuss’s hypothesis (Mellstr ¨

om & Johannesson 2008). Frey & Oberholzer-

Gee (1997) found similar effects in their study of Swiss villages that were being considered as

potential nuclear waste repository sites. When no compensation was offered, just over half of

villagers indicated a willingness to accept the site, despite widely perceived hazards. But when the

villagers considered the prospect of compensation for hosting the facility, consent dropped by

half. In this way, civic duty was undermined when it was framed as purchasable.

A provocative and unusual demonstration of how markets can erode moral conduct comes from

a recent experiment by Falk & Szech (2013). Relative to a control condition in which individuals

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made independent decisions, participants who engaged in competitive market interactions were

more willing to allow a healthy mouse to be killed as a consequence of an exchange. The authors

conclude that the undermining of moral behavior may stem partly from the information markets

convey about social norms. Speciﬁcally, witnessing other market participants pursue their own

self-interest at a cost to others’ welfare communicates that egoism is normative.

Economic sociologists have also studied how market norms and institutions frame the morality

of a given behavior and can thereby alter cultural conceptions of what is moral or immoral

(Fourcade & Healy 2007). Zelizer’s (1983) classic study shows how the insurance industry

successfully transformed the perceived meaning of life insurance, once viewed by the public

as morally repulsive, into a moral responsibility to loved ones. Healy (2000) traced the large

variation in blood donation in EU countries to international differences in collection regimes.

Like Titmuss (1970), Healy concludes that the ways organizations frame the act of giving blood

impact donors’ motivations for giving. For instance, those who give to state collection regimes

might interpret their donation as quid pro quo for beneﬁts received from the state health system,

whereas those who donate via the Red Cross may view their donation in more altruistic terms,

since donors are often recruited via religious and volunteer organizations. Along similar lines,

Almeling (2007) ﬁnds egg donor agencies are more likely than sperm banks to frame donation in

terms of altruism, despite the much greater monetary compensation given to egg donors. Further

insights into how market norms and broader institutions impact prosocial values and behaviors

are likely to be forthcoming as sociologists increasingly turn their attention to morality and how

it intersects with economic life (Fourcade & Healy 2007, Hitlin & Vaisey 2013).

REPUTATIONS

In the last decade, perhaps no mechanism promoting cooperation and prosocial behavior has

received as much attention as reputation. Once viewed as secondary to material incentives, the

reputational rewards that go to those who behave in generous or cooperative ways are now also

viewed as a powerful force shaping prosocial action. Researchers generally conceive of reputation

as the “set of judgments a community makes about the personal qualities of one of its members”

(Emler 1990, p. 171). Here we are particularly concerned with reputational judgments with moral

content, speciﬁcally judgments of a person’s cooperativeness, trustworthiness, or generosity. Sta-

tus, on the other hand, is generally deﬁned as a person’s relative standing in a hierarchy based on

prestige, honor, and respect (Thye 2000). Note that these concepts are overlapping but distinct.

For instance, whereas status researchers generally focus on prestige hierarchies in which individual

rank is relative (Sell 1997, Willer 2009), a person’s reputation as more or less prosocial need not be

relative and thus may not necessarily impact the reputations of fellow group or community mem-

bers (though see Barclay & Willer 2007). Here we review work on cooperation and reputation

before turning to recent work on status.

Prosocial Reputations and Reputation Systems

Research has documented a great array of beneﬁts that accrue to those with prosocial reputations,

ﬁnding that such individuals are trusted more (Barclay 2004), are respected more (Hardy & van

Vugt 2006, Willer 2009), are cooperated with more (Barclay 2004, Willer 2009), have more

inﬂuence (Willer 2009), and are disproportionately selected as exchange partners (Barclay &

Willer 2007) and group leaders (Milinski et al. 2002). In online markets, such as eBay, those

who are known to be reliably cooperative can command higher prices for their items (Diekmann

et al. 2014). Consistent with the many beneﬁts that accrue to those with a prosocial reputation,

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research ﬁnds that prosocial behavior increases dramatically where reputational rewards are

possible (Barclay & Willer 2007). Indeed, recent work shows that children as young as ﬁve years

old engage in prosocial impression management, acting more generously when they can develop

a good reputation for doing so (Engelmann et al. 2013).

The impact of reputational considerations on prosocial behavior is also well established in the

ethnographic literature (Mauss 1922, Smith & Bird 2000) as well as in studies of social move-

ments ( Jasper 2011). Chong (1991), for instance, views reputational concerns as an often critical

impetus for participation in the high-risk Freedom Rides of the civil rights movement. Moreover,

contributions to other types of large-scale cooperative endeavors, such as online marketplaces and

open-source software communities, are driven in large part by contributors’ reputational moti-

vations (Anthony et al. 2009, Smith & Kollock 1999). Field experiments on energy conservation

(Yoeli et al. 2013) and longitudinal studies of blood donors (Lacetera & Macis 2010) have docu-

mented similar effects, ﬁnding that prosociality increases when behaviors are public. These studies

illustrate how much the prospect of reputational gain, and conversely the threat of loss, serves to

promote cooperative and prosocial behaviors.

Establishing Reputation Systems

Just as with sanction-backed norms, the ubiquity of reputation systems poses a theoretical puzzle.

Many reputation systems can be viewed as public goods, valuable sources of information generally

available to anyone, whether or not one has contributed to them (Smith & Kollock 1999). Thus, the

provision of reputational information is in essence the production of a public good, and therefore

the existence and maintenance of reputation systems should not be taken for granted. After all,

offering feedback about one’s experience with a trader in an online marketplace, or gossiping about

a group member’s bad behavior, often takes time or effort while also risking retaliation.

Despite this, a number of studies have found that individuals readily share reputational infor-

mation about those with whom they have interacted. For example, a study of eBay transactions

found high levels of contributions to its reputation system, with 60–80% of buyers leaving feed-

back about sellers (Diekmann et al. 2014). The authors concluded from their analyses of feedback

patterns that the ratings were motivated in part by other-regarding preferences. Other work is

consistent with this claim, showing that, when spreading reputational information could protect

others from exploitation, people readily share information about prior exchange partners via gos-

sip, even suffering costs to do so (Feinberg et al. 2014). This work further ﬁnds that such prosocial

gossip was engaged in most frequently by more altruistic individuals, for whom spreading gossip

reduced stress they felt upon learning of an individual’s prior antisocial behavior. Beyond these

altruistic motives, contributions to reputation systems can also be guided by enlightened self-

interest, as leaving a positive review of one person can lead to reciprocation by the subject of

the review (Resnick & Zeckhauser 2002). It also seems likely that those who participate in the

creation and maintenance of reputation systems may also receive reputational beneﬁts, but we are

not aware of any work addressing this.

We thus know that people contribute to reputation systems, but another puzzle is why these

systems are so effective in communities with high mobility and very low chances of repeated

interactions, such as online markets. After all, these marketplaces do not generally prevent sellers

with unscrupulous reputations from wiping their slates clean by forging a new identity, and then

moving on to exploit more unsuspecting buyers. Under such circumstances, the absence of a

negative reputation is of little value in deciphering which traders to avoid. Positive reputations,

on the other hand, provide much more useful information about prospective partners’ trustwor-

thiness, since they are built on a history of cooperative interactions. Experimental simulations of

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market exchanges by Yamagishi et al. (2009) conﬁrm that when traders can reestablish identities,

positive (or mixed) reputation systems promote higher levels of honesty in transactions compared

with purely negative reputation systems. Thus, whereas negative reputation systems facilitate

trustworthiness via the threat of exclusion from communities with ﬁxed identities and highly em-

bedded interactions, such as the wholesale diamond markets analyzed by Coleman (1988), positive

reputations are likely to be more beneﬁcial in systems such as online markets where nonembedded

interactions are commonplace and interactants can strategically alter their identities.

Status Impacts Contributions to Collective Actions

Whereas the work reviewed above focuses on reputations, a separate line of research has tied

generosity (Flynn 2003) and the provision of public goods (Hardy & van Vugt 2006, Willer 2009)

more speciﬁcally to status processes. For instance, Willer (2009) showed that those who con-

tributed more to group efforts were subsequently accorded higher status by their group members.

This higher status, in turn, increased their later contributions to the group via enhanced progroup

motivation. These downstream effects of status on prosociality have also been demonstrated in

the context of contributions to large-scale collective actions, such as Wikipedia.org, the online

open-source encyclopedia. The quantity and quality of content on Wikipedia depend on voluntary

contributions, but its content can be accessed by anyone, regardless of whether they contribute.

A ﬁeld experiment by Restivo & van de Rijt (2012) with Wikipedia users underscores the impact

of status rewards in sustaining contributions among the most active contributors. Users can give

volunteers barnstars, symbolic recognition for their prior contributions to the collective good.

Restivo & van de Rijt found that random assignment of barnstars to high contributors resulted in

increased subsequent contributions, consistent with Willer’s laboratory experiment.

Status hierarchies in groups may help promote collective actions not only by affecting how

much people give, but also by coordinating when they give. For instance, Simpson et al. (2012)

built on insights from status characteristics theory to explain how extant status differences in

groups inﬂuence collective action outcomes. They found that possessing higher relative status

led participants to be more likely to initiate collective action by making costly contributions to

group goals. Such early contributions by high-status actors tend to be relatively large (Sell 1997)

and inﬂuence lower-status actors to follow through with higher contributions than they would

have otherwise made (Eckel et al. 2010). Thus, via a sequencing and inﬂuence process, status

hierarchies can attenuate both the start-up and free rider problems (Heckathorn 1996) associated

with collective actions.

Limits and Liabilities of Status for Prosociality

Many of the ﬁndings reviewed above support a functionalist account of status in groups. Indeed, a

growing body of empirical work is consistent with the view that hierarchies facilitate group success

by motivating individuals to sacriﬁce for group goals and by coordinating members’ behaviors

(Magee & Galinsky 2008). But as Anderson & Willer (2014) note in a recent assessment of

the literature, hierarchies often form around group members’ culturally deﬁned beliefs about

one another’s status characteristics, e.g., that whites are more generally competent than African

Americans or that men are more competent than women. To the extent that status is unrelated

to task performance or expertise, status-based hierarchies will likely not promote—and may even

stymy—group goals.

Moreover, when group hierarchies are zero-sum (Anderson et al. 2006, Blau 1964), individuals’

status concerns can lead to interpersonal conﬂicts and/or low hierarchical consensus that can

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undermine the group-beneﬁting effects of status hierarchies (Anderson & Willer 2014). Similarly,

Kitts (2006) argues that when status rewards for group contributions are rival (and sufﬁciently

valuable), norms may emerge that prescribe sanctioning those who contribute to collective

efforts, consistent with research on antisocial punishment addressed above. Further clariﬁcation

of the circumstances under which status concerns encourage group-beneﬁting contributions

versus dysfunctional status conﬂicts and hierarchical dissensus is an important avenue for future

research.

RELATIONS

Social relations and network structure are key channels through which the mechanisms addressed

thus far are realized. For instance, people can generally have reputations only if they are connected

to others, directly or indirectly, through social networks (Emler 1990). Similarly, exposure to

norms and sanctions depends on the strength and patterning of relations connecting individuals

(Homans 1974, Horne 2009). However, relations and network structure are more than mere

conduits through which other social factors ﬂow to impact prosocial behavior. These aspects of

social structure also have important effects of their own. Perhaps most obviously, social relations

are frequently characterized by emotional commitment, feelings of moral obligation, interest in

the partner’s welfare, and reduced uncertainty about the other’s likely behavior, all of which can

promote prosociality within a relation. Additionally, where relations are expected to endure in

the future, either for affective, structural, or other reasons, that expectation casts a shadow of the

future on present interaction, reducing incentives for malfeasance (Axelrod 1984). Thus, positive

social relations tend to attenuate problems of trust and trustworthiness that might otherwise stymy

social and economic exchanges (DiMaggio & Louch 1998, Kollock 1994).

But research has increasingly demonstrated how networks impact prosociality beyond the

qualities of dyadic relations. Recent work highlights how the structure of relations matters, with

individuals’ network location, the network distance between pairs of individuals, and diffusion

dynamics, as well as properties of the network as a whole (e.g., density, dynamism) having impor-

tant effects on prosociality. In the sections that follow, we move beyond individuals’ immediate

adjacencies, describing how cooperation and prosocial behavior are impacted by broader network

structures and individuals’ embeddedness within those structures.

Distal and Indirect Effects of Network Relations on Prosociality

Although the highest levels of prosociality tend to occur within enduring positive relations,

research also reveals important distal network effects in which prosociality is often extended to

those to whom one is only indirectly connected. For instance, although Jews who were saved from

the Nazi Holocaust were typically aided by people they knew, many rescuers were strangers. In

the majority of such cases, the two were connected indirectly by an intermediary (Varese & Yaish

2000). More generally, studies of naturally occurring networks ﬁnd that generosity decreases as

the network distance between individuals increases, such that people are generous toward friends

of friends, somewhat less so toward friends of friends of friends, and least generous toward

more distal others or strangers (Apicella et al. 2012, Baldassarri & Grossman 2013, Leider et al.

2009).

Networks can also indirectly encourage prosociality through the spread of reputational infor-

mation about others’ trustworthiness through ties that connect group members (Buskens & Raub

2002) and by shaping levels of trust in strangers (Macy & Skvoretz 1998). As Dasgupta (1988,

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pp. 64–65, cited in Glanville et al. 2013) notes, “in dealing with someone you learn something

not only about him, but also about others in his society. You learn something about population

statistics. Therefore, if you meet several honest persons and no dishonest ones you might want to

revise your prior opinion of society at large.” Several studies (Glanville et al. 2013, Welch et al.

2007) support the claim that the development of interpersonal trust in cooperative relationships

tends to generalize, promoting greater trust in strangers.

Other approaches to the diffusion of prosociality through networks are based in social exchange

accounts of generalized reciprocity, in which an actor who receives beneﬁts from one party does

not directly reciprocate the benefactor but instead pays it forward by giving to a third party

(Bearman 1997, Ekeh 1974, Takahashi 2000, Uehara 1990, Yamagishi & Cook 1993).2Research

ﬁnds that generalized exchange systems featuring this form of reciprocity can foster high levels

of solidarity (Molm et al. 2007, but see also Lawler et al. 2008), provided they achieve sufﬁcient

levels of productivity (Willer et al. 2012). Further, once achieved, group solidarity can propel

group members’ subsequent costly contributions to such systems (Willer et al. 2012).

That individuals tend to pay generosity forward, responding to acts of kindness by subsequently

behaving more generously with third parties, is supported by both ﬁeld and laboratory experiments

conducted in a variety of cultural contexts (Tsvetkova & Macy 2014, Willer et al. 2014b). In

addition to unilateral giving behaviors, other work establishes how contributions to public goods

can cascade through networks, inﬂuencing the behaviors of people two and even three degrees

removed from the original contributor (Fowler & Christakis 2010).

Although these studies show that prosocial behavior diffuses through social network ties, our

knowledge of how the structure of relations in networks can amplify or attenuate these effects

remains limited. Linking micro-level understandings of factors that promote prosociality with

features of network structure is an important direction for future research.

Network Integration and Network Structure

Most studies that address how prosociality varies with structural location focus on actors’ centrality

in a network. Even controlling for social distance, researchers ﬁnd that individuals who are more

central are more generous to fellow group members (Bra ˜

nas-Garza et al. 2010) and contribute

more to collective efforts (Baldassarri 2014). But why are network centrality and prosociality

positively related? It may be that more altruistic and cooperative types become more central in

the network, consistent with research reviewed above on the reputational beneﬁts of prosociality.

Alternatively, high centrality may lead actors to behave more prosocially, perhaps because of their

greater visibility. The correlation between prior behavior and reputation tends to be strongest

for more popular or central group members (Anderson & Shirako 2008). Thus, the potential

reputational rewards and costs for acting prosocially (or failing to do) may be greater for more

central actors. Finally, being more centrally located in a group’s network is associated with higher

levels of commitment to the group (Paxton & Moody 2003), which can motivate sacriﬁce for the

group and its members. Thus, existing research largely leaves open whether network centrality is

a cause of prosociality, a consequence, or both, making the identiﬁcation of causal direction and

underlying mechanisms an important goal for future work.

2Whereas generalized reciprocity occurs when an actor who receives beneﬁts or helps a third party in turn ( you help her because

I helped you), indirect reciprocity occurs when an actor who gives beneﬁts to another is subsequently helped by a third party

(she helps you because you helped me). Indirect reciprocity is driven by the reputation processes discussed above, in which those

who act prosocially develop prosocial reputations and, as a consequence, are helped by others when the need arises.

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Moving beyond an individual’s location in the network, other work has addressed how prop-

erties of the larger social network inﬂuence network-wide rates of cooperation (Rand & Nowak

2013). This research ﬁnds that dynamic networks in which ties can be added or deleted tend to

facilitate cooperation ( Jordan et al. 2013, Rand et al. 2011).3The ability to form new ties increases

the incentive to cooperate in order to attract new partners, consistent with work on reputations

discussed above. Similarly, the ability to shed ties to defectors promotes the formation of clusters

of cooperators.

A separate line of research addresses the impact of interpersonal ties and network structure

on contributions to collective actions. Formal models have addressed how the diffusion of con-

tributions to collective action depends on the distribution of potential contributors’ underlying

propensity to join the effort based on the number of others who have already joined (i.e., their

thresholds for adoption; Chwe 1999, Granovetter 1978), as well as the density of the network

(Gould 1993, Marwell et al. 1988; for a review, see Oliver 1993). Depending on speciﬁc model

parameters, researchers have found very different effects of network density. Macy (1991), for

instance, ﬁnds that density can be detrimental to collective action because nonparticipation can

more easily diffuse through the network. Kim & Bearman (1997), on the other hand, ﬁnd that

greater density has a positive impact on collective action because it increases communication and

interpersonal inﬂuence between prospective contributors, and creates more favorable conditions

for shared interest in the collective good. Although there are some mixed ﬁndings (see Passy &

Monsch 2014), the empirical literature on social movements is largely consistent with the view

that denser networks facilitate collective action success (e.g., McAdam 1986, Pfaff 1996).4

Drawbacks of Network Embeddedness for Prosociality

We have so far focused primarily on the beneﬁts of relations and networks for prosociality. But

one of the most active research programs on trust points to conditions under which dense social

networks can be detrimental to generalized trust. Most of this work derives from Yamagishi &

Yamagishi’s (1994) ﬁnding that collectivist (e.g., East Asian) cultures tend to be characterized by

lower levels of generalized trust than individualist (e.g., most Western) cultures. Research reviewed

above ﬁnds that the development of trust in personal relations can generalize to strangers. This

may be because people tend to attribute a partner’s cooperative behavior to benign intent (“He did

not take advantage of me. He is a trustworthy person”). As the number of such positive interactions

increases, a person may come to expect that others, in general, can be trusted. But Yamagishi &

Yamagishi (1994) suggest that the development of generalized trust in this way is inhibited when

such interactions are embedded within densely connected networks, because such networks are

characterized by high levels of informal monitoring and sanctioning. Similar to the effects of

formal contracts discussed above, monitoring and sanctioning in such networks provide assurance

that one’s cooperation is unlikely to be exploited. Because the sanctioning system is very salient

in such network settings, others’ cooperation is likely to be attributed to the system rather than to

goodwill or benign intent (“He did not take advantage of me, since the business partners we have

3Earlier work, although not framed in terms of network structure, also shows how the ability to enter or exit relations favors

more cooperative strategies (Orbell & Dawes 1993, Yamagishi & Hayashi 1996).

4Scholars have called for greater speciﬁcation of when and why social networks matter for social movements (e.g., Kitts 2000).

As one example, it may be that network density facilitates recruitment into a social movement, as suggested by the Kim &

Bearman (1997) model, but also leaves the movement vulnerable to cascades of departures, as might be suggested by the Macy

(1991) model.

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in common would have ostracized him had he done so”). Because benign behaviors are more apt

to be attributed to structural factors than to benign intentions, densely connected networks are

predicted to inhibit the development of generalized trust, compared with more sparsely connected

networks.

Empirical tests of this structural account are largely indirect, because variation in network

structure is generally assumed rather than measured. Nevertheless, a number of experiments (e.g.,

Yamagishi 1988) and surveys (Yamagishi & Yamagishi 1994) support the prediction that Japanese

are less trusting of strangers than Americans are. More generally, a comparison of 31 nations

found that collectivist cultures generally feature lower generalized trust (Gheorghiu et al. 2009).

But again, none of these studies directly measures rates of interaction within densely connected

networks. One effort to more directly test these claims found that higher rates of interaction with

family members were associated with lower trust toward strangers (Ermisch & Gambetta 2010).

But future research should attempt to establish clearer causal evidence, especially as it relates to

cross-cultural differences in generalized trust.

DISCUSSION

In contrast to other ﬁelds, sociological research on the forces shaping cooperation and prosocial

behavior has focused almost entirely on factors external to the individual. Our review has focused

on three classes of such social mechanisms—rules, reputation, and relations—found to encourage

progroup actions. Research on rules shows the importance of social norms, both descriptive and

injunctive, and sanctions for encouraging prosocial acts. Work in this area often ﬁnds that the

organic, bottom-up emergence of norms and enforcement practices yields more effective institu-

tions than those imposed from the top-down. Research also ﬁnds that the centralization of norm

enforcement is typically more efﬁcient than distributed enforcement systems, especially in settings

where leaders emerge through processes viewed as legitimate. Among other beneﬁts, centralized

leadership circumvents the diffusion of responsibility for sanctioning that can plague decentralized

sanctioning regimes. At the same time, research also shows that, precisely because sanctions en-

courage prosocial behavior, they can undermine both trust and intrinsic prosocial motivations by

creating ambiguity around the underlying motivations driving one’s own and others’ prosocial acts.

Studies of reputation highlight the many beneﬁts, including gifts, prestige, inﬂuence, and ac-

cess to productive collaborative endeavors, that accrue to individuals who overcome narrow self-

interest to behave prosocially. Consistent with this, prosocial acts are more common in situations

that facilitate reputational beneﬁts, for example, public as opposed to anonymous settings. Fur-

ther, receiving reputational rewards for contributing to collective endeavors encourages greater

giving in the future. However, work in this area does not ﬁnd uniformly positive effects. For ex-

ample, whereas reputation-based hierarchies often beneﬁt groups by coordinating group efforts,

hierarchies based on nonmeritorious factors such as ascriptive characteristics can undermine the

functional effects of hierarchies.

Last, work on relations ﬁnds that a variety of properties of networks, and the location of

individuals and relationships in them, shape prosocial behavior. Studies ﬁnd that more generous

individuals tend to be more centrally located in social networks. Relationships too are shaped by

network properties, as dyadic giving diffuses across relationships via generalized reciprocity, and

helping behavior is more likely between actors that are closer to one another in the network.

Further, networks with high density and the dynamic capacity for actors to form and dissolve

relationships also tend to feature greater cooperation. But here also research shows that this class

of social mechanisms is not entirely functional for promoting cooperation. Speciﬁcally, research

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suggests that dense networks featuring high levels of informal monitoring and sanctioning can

undermine generalized trust, limiting the formation of productive, cooperative efforts among

strangers.

Interaction of Person and Situation

Here we have sought to balance the focus on mechanisms internal to the individual (e.g., pref-

erences, altruism) common in behavioral economics and psychology by emphasizing the social

factors external to individuals that are most often studied by sociologists. But an important ques-

tion remains: How do these two classes of mechanisms coexist? On the one hand, it could be that

both types of mechanisms operate in parallel, having simple main effects on prosociality and coop-

eration. On the other hand, another possibility is that they interact, with one somehow moderating

the effects of the other.

Whereas our review emphasizes the main effects of social factors, several recent studies support

the latter, interactional account. Speciﬁcally, research suggests that social mechanisms such as

those reviewed here have their strongest effects on more egoistic individuals who, in their absence,

would be less likely to behave prosocially. In lifting up the prosociality of more egoistic actors,

these mechanisms transform the very heterogeneous underlying motivations of individuals into

the more consistent, predictable, and benign behaviors we observe in public, social settings. For

instance, Simpson & Willer (2008) ﬁnd that the behaviors of persons classiﬁed a priori as altruists

and egoists differ greatly in anonymous contexts, with altruists acting much more prosocially than

egoists. But these differences largely disappear in public settings where prosocial behavior could

lead to downstream monetary rewards, as egoists give much more generously in such settings than

they would in private. Likewise, egoists are more affected by the threat of gossip, cooperating

at higher rates when gossipers can pass on information about their behaviors to potential future

interaction partners (Feinberg et al. 2012).

Willer et al. (2014a) report parallel patterns when rewards for prosociality are purely rep-

utational with no downstream material consequences. They ﬁnd that more egoistic individuals

are more likely than their more altruistic counterparts to pursue enhanced social status, and the

prospect of status gains lead them to act more prosocially. More altruistic people, on the other

hand, tend to give at high levels whether or not status gains are possible. Finally, a number of

studies show that, although more altruistic individuals act much more prosocially than egoists

in one-off interactions with strangers, these behavioral differences largely disappear when actors

are embedded in ongoing relations (e.g., Parks & Rumble 2001, Simpson et al. 2014, van Lange

et al. 2011). This is because the “shadow of the future” increases egoists’ cooperation, by aligning

cooperation with self-interest, but has less impact on altruists, who would be likely to cooperate

regardless.

More generally, laboratory studies of socially decontextualized groups show that person-level

factors alone are generally unable to sustain cooperation at the high levels observed in many human

groups. As noted above, these groups initially show much variation in contributions, with more

altruistic individuals giving at high levels and more egoistic people contributing little or nothing at

all. Contributions of more altruistic individuals then decline over time in response to their egoistic

counterparts’ noncooperation (Fehr & Gintis 2007, Sell & Wilson 1991). Thus, in the absence

of social mechanisms—e.g., clear enforceable norms, opportunities to gain reputation or status

for contributions to group efforts, or social connections between group members—contributions

fall to very low levels. Considered alongside research just described on the interactive effects of

personal and situational factors, the failure of cooperation in socially decontextualized groups

suggests that although prosocial motivations help foster initial cooperation, they are generally

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insufﬁcient unless paired with social mechanisms. Further, these mechanisms seem to have most

of their effects via their impact on more egoistic actors.

Social Mechanisms and Attributional Ambiguity

Because social mechanisms lead self-interested individuals to behave prosocially in ways similar

to the behavior of intrinsically motivated people, they can also introduce ambiguity about what

motivates the prosocial behavior of others or even oneself. After all, unlike laboratory experiments,

where intrinsic motivations can be isolated from extrinsic factors, social life rarely affords group

members the opportunity to observe one another’s behavior both when a given social mechanism

is present and when it is not. As a consequence, people often must make attributions about what

motivated another’s behavior when that behavior could have resulted from intrinsic motivation

to beneﬁt the group, extrinsic factors, or some combination thereof. Similarly, we are all to some

extent “strangers to ourselves” (Wilson 2009), lacking perfect insight into what motivates our

behaviors. Individuals thus may sometimes misattribute behaviors that in fact stemmed from al-

truistic motivations to the presence of an extrinsic reward instead (e.g., Simpson & Eriksson 2009).

Attributing others’ behaviors to the presence of extrinsic motivators can reduce trust that others

will cooperate in the absence of extrinsic motivators. Likewise, attributing one’s own cooperative

behaviors to extrinsic factors can undermine the likelihood that the individual will cooperate in

their absence.

For each social mechanism discussed above, we described evidence for how it might also un-

dermine cooperative outcomes, by eroding intrinsic motivations, raising suspicions of motivations

underlying others’ behaviors, or both. We noted, for instance, that the introduction of monetary

sanctions can lead those who would otherwise be inclined to cooperate to behave less prosocially

when the sanctions are removed (e.g., Bowles 2008). These sanctions can also reduce interpersonal

trust by introducing ambiguity about why others are contributing to group goals (Mulder et al.

2006). Likewise, the presence of reputational rewards for prosociality can create uncertainty about

whether others are giving out of altruistic motivation or the egoistic pursuit of reputational gain

(Anderson & Willer 2014, Gambetta & Przepiorka 2014, Willer et al. 2014a). Last, we described

theory and research showing that interactions within densely connected networks can undermine

generalized trust in others by introducing ambiguity about whether others’ generosity stems from

benign intentions or the presence of the monitoring and sanctioning systems that exist in such

networks (Yamagishi & Yamagishi 1994).

In this way, social mechanisms in a sense foster dependency, as they make themselves more

necessary by eroding the force of the person-level factors they complement. For social systems

facing the downsides of these social mechanisms the answer is clear: Commit further to the ad-

ministration of these social mechanisms, as the practicality of relying on individuals’ spontaneous

prosocial nature is diminished. An important question for future work is what kinds of social

mechanisms might promote cooperation among more self-interested individuals but without un-

dermining prosocial motivation or trust. Recent work suggests that some systems that bestow

social rewards on prosocial actions are less likely to undermine intrinsic motivations and trust. For

instance, although zero-sum status systems can reduce trust in the sincerity of others’ prosocial

actions (Anderson & Willer 2014), less competitive status and reputation systems appear less apt

than monetary sanctions to undermine intrinsic motivation, as suggested by research showing that

receiving respect for past generous acts enhances progroup motivation and costly contributions

to the group (Restivo & van de Rijt 2012, Willer 2009). More directly, Kuwabara (2015) had

participants complete exchanges in the presence of either contracts or reputation systems similar

to those used in online marketplaces. In contrast to the downstream effects of contracts, those in

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the reputation condition did not subsequently act in less trusting and less trustworthy ways when

they interacted outside the purview of the reputation system. Mechanisms of this sort may succeed

in promoting cooperation, obviating the paradoxical effects of social mechanisms that promote

cooperation while introducing deleterious uncertainty about one’s own and others’ motivations.

CONCLUSION

The question of how groups reconcile tensions between what is best for individuals and what is best

for the collective has long been central to sociology and other social sciences. That social dilemmas

have received such widespread attention is not surprising, given the broad range of situations in

which they are encountered and the detrimental consequences that can result when collective

efforts founder, such as when common-pool resources are overharvested, arms proliferate between

rival nations, or the Earth’s climate changes irreversibly due to human activity. As Kollock (1998,

p. 183) noted in an earlier review, “many of the most challenging problems we face, from the

interpersonal to the international, are at their core social dilemmas.”

Research outside sociology has recently explained solutions to social dilemmas through fac-

tors residing primarily within individuals. This line of work has established powerful evidence

for the force of preferences, motivations, and emotions. Insights from this work, in particular

the ﬁnding that underlying concern for others’ welfare varies greatly across individuals, offer a

welcome corrective to the oversocialized model of human nature from early- to mid-twentieth-

century sociology, a model famously criticized by Wrong (1961, p. 183) for positing a ubiquitous

internalization of prosocial values and denying “the reality of the Hobbesian question.” These

insights likewise move us beyond the undersocialized (Granovetter 1985) rational egoist models

that have long dominated economics and political science but which fail to account for the levels

of cooperation documented in both laboratory and natural settings (e.g., Ostrom 1998, Ud´

ehn

1993). Despite the importance of this line of work, an emphasis on explanations of social order

arising from within people risks neglecting the critical sources of social order that come from

outside individuals, social mechanisms residing in the structures and institutions in which actors

are embedded.

Our review points to the critical role social mechanisms such as rules, reputations, and relations

play in creating and maintaining high levels of cooperation in groups. However, we also high-

light an important duality inherent to these factors. Precisely because they direct less altruistic

individuals to behave the way more altruistic people do, these mechanisms beneﬁt groups while

obscuring our view of one another’s true motivations. This obfuscation can make us dependent

on the mechanisms, as intrinsic motivation and trust are often eroded, even as cooperation rises.

In this way, social mechanisms offer to us a sort of social contract, as they take away from us a

discerning view of our own and others’ character but deliver in return the beneﬁts of efﬁcient,

harmonious, and productive group living.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The authors are not aware of any afﬁliations, memberships, funding, or ﬁnancial holdings that

might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Work on this article was supported by grants SES 0647169 and SES 1058236 from the Na-

tional Science Foundation. We thank Delia Baldassarri, Steve Benard, Kimmo Eriksson, Christine

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SO41CH10-Simpson-Willer ARI 20 April 2015 13:23

Horne, Ko Kuwabara, Hanne van der Iest, David Willer, and Toshio Yamagishi for very helpful

comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this article.

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www.annualreviews.org •Beyond Altruism 10.21

Maximizing User Engagement in Social Networks: A Game-Theoretic Approach to Network Participation and Resource Sharing

Preprint

Oct 2024

We propose a game-theoretic framework to model and optimize user engagement in cooperative activities over social networks. While traditional diffusion models suggest that individuals are only influenced by their neighbors, empirical evidence shows that diffusion alone does not fully explain network evolution, and non-diffusion factors play a significant role in network growth. We model network participation and resource-sharing as strategic games involving boundedly rational players to address this gap between the analytical models and empirical evidence. Specifically, we employ Log-Linear Learning (LLL), a version of noisy best response, to capture players' decision-making strategies. By incorporating stochastic decision models like LLL, our framework integrates both diffusion and non-diffusion dynamics into network evolution dynamics. Through equilibrium analysis and simulations, we demonstrate that our model aligns with theoretical predictions from existing analytical frameworks and empirical observations across various initial network configurations. Our second contribution is a novel method for selecting anchor nodes to enhance user participation. This approach allows system designers to identify anchor nodes and compute their incentives in real time under a more realistic information requirement constraints as compared to the existing approaches. The proposed approach adapts to changing network conditions by reallocating resources from less impactful to more influential nodes. Furthermore, the method is resilient to anchor node failures, ensuring sustained and continuous network participation.

The effect of trusting contexts in social dilemmas with collective and individual solutions

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2024

Trust encourages members of communities to cooperate and provide public goods. However, the literature has yet to fully investigate how high and low trusting communities deal with collective action dilemmas with multiple solutions. The latter may raise the risk of coordination failure. Using a preregistered interactive experiment (N participants/groups = 371/70), we investigated people’s decisions when they have three possible choices in confronting a collective action dilemma: investing in an individual solution, investing in a collective solution, and free-riding. We manipulated the incentives for trusting and trustworthy interactions among community members, and, consistent with our expectations, we found that people in high-trust contexts invest more in collective solutions, compared to people in low-trust contexts. In the latter case, participants opted more for individual solutions, using resources less efficiently. However, we found no difference in the prevalence of free-riding in high- compared to low-trust contexts.

Social discounting in a symmetric giving and taking frame: An artifactual field experiment with young South African adults

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2024
J EXP ANAL BEHAV

In the dictator game, the evidence that giving is equivalent to taking is mixed. The purpose of this study was to investigate framing effects (giving/taking) on social-discounting rates among young African adults from an informal settlement in South Africa. Employing a within-participant design, these young adults completed a series of incentivized dictator games with an isomorphically equivalent giving and taking frame at each of eight social distances. Altruism was measured by the social-discounting rate, and framing effects were assessed using generalized linear regression. The study provides empirical evidence that prosocial behavior among young South African adults is subject to framing because exponential, hyperbolic, and q-exponential social-discounting rates in all instances were lower in the taking than in the giving frame. This difference may be the result of greater "egalitarianism" and "selflessness" elicited by the taking frame, which likely is a product of the experiment's particular social and economic field context. More comparative research is required to establish the working of specific mechanics of morality that may operate differently in diverse socioeconomic contexts, thus contributing to elucidating the heterogeneous nature of findings in this area of study.

Institutions and Cooperation: A Meta-Analysis of Structural Features in Social Dilemmas

Preprint

Full-text available

Sep 2024

Cooperation underlies the ability of groups to realize collective benefits (e.g., creation of public goods). Yet, cooperation can be difficult to achieve when people face situations with conflicting interests between what is best for individuals versus the collective (i.e., social dilemmas). To address this challenge, groups can implement rules about structural changes in a situation. But what institutional rules can best facilitate cooperation? Theoretically, rules can be made to affect structural features of a social dilemma, such as the possible actions, outcomes, and people involved. We derived 13 pre-registered hypotheses from existing work and collected six decades of empirical research to test how nine structural features influence cooperation within prisoner’s dilemmas and public goods dilemmas. We do this by meta-analyzing mean levels of cooperation across studies (Study 1, k = 2,340, N = 229,528), and also examining how manipulations of these structural features in social dilemmas affect cooperation within studies (Study 2, k = 909). Results indicated that lower conflict of interests was associated with higher cooperation, and that (1) the implementation of sanctions (i.e., reward and punishment of behaviors) and (2) allowing for communication most strongly enhanced cooperation. However, we found inconsistent support for the hypotheses that group size and matching design affect cooperation. Other structural features (e.g., symmetry of dilemmas, sequential decision making, payment) were not associated with cooperation. Overall, these findings inform institutions that can (or not) facilitate cooperation.

Oxytocin in Human Social Network Cooperation

Article

Nov 2024
NEUROSCIENTIST

Human society is organized in structured social networks upon which large-scale cooperation among genetically unrelated individuals is favored and persists. Such large-scale cooperation is crucial for the success of the human species but also one of the most puzzling challenges. Recent work in social and behavioral neuroscience has linked human cooperation to oxytocin, an evolutionarily ancient and structurally preserved hypothalamic neuropeptide. This review aims to elucidate how oxytocin promotes nonkin cooperation in social networks by reviewing its effects at three distinct levels: individual cooperation, the formation of interpersonal relationships, and the establishment of heterogeneous network structures. We propose oxytocin as a proximate mechanism for fostering large-scale cooperation in human societies. Specifically, oxytocin plays an important role in facilitating network-wide cooperation in human societies by 1) increasing individual cooperation, mitigating noncooperation motives, and facilitating the enforcement of cooperative norms; 2) fostering interpersonal bonding and synchronization; and 3) facilitating the formation of heterogeneous network structures.

References

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Nov 2024

Experiments have gained prominence in sociology in recent years. Increased interest in testing causal theories through experimental designs has ignited a debate about which experimental designs can facilitate scientific progress in sociology. This book discusses the implications of research interests for the design of experiments, identifies points of commonality and disagreement among the different perspectives within sociology, and elaborates on the rationales of each. It helps experimental sociologists find appropriate designs for answering specific research questions while alerting them to the challenges. Offering more than just a guide, this book explores both the historical roots of experimental sociology and the cutting-edge techniques of rigorous sociology. It concludes with a tantalizing peek into the future and provides a roadmap to the exciting prospects and uncharted territories of experimental sociology.

Behavioral barriers impede pro-environmental decision-making: Experimental evidence from incentivized laboratory and vignette studies

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Nov 2024
ECOL ECON

Institutions and Cooperation: A Meta-Analysis of Structural Features in Social Dilemmas

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2024

Cooperation underlies the ability of groups to realize collective benefits (e.g., creation of public goods). Yet, cooperation can be difficult to achieve when people face situations with conflicting interests between what is best for individuals versus the collective (i.e., social dilemmas). To address this challenge, groups can implement rules about structural changes in a situation. But what institutional rules can best facilitate cooperation? Theoretically, rules can be made to affect structural features of a social dilemma, such as the possible actions, outcomes, and people involved. We derived 13 preregistered hypotheses from existing work and collected 6 decades of empirical research to test how nine structural features influence cooperation within prisoner’s dilemmas and public goods dilemmas. We do this by meta-analyzing mean levels of cooperation across studies (Study 1, k = 2,340, N = 229,528), and also examining how manipulations of these structural features in social dilemmas affect cooperation within studies (Study 2, k = 909). Results indicated that lower conflict of interests was associated with higher cooperation and that (a) the implementation of sanctions (i.e., reward and punishment of behaviors) and (b) allowing for communication most strongly enhanced cooperation. However, we found inconsistent support for the hypotheses that group size and matching design affect cooperation. Other structural features (e.g., symmetry of dilemmas, sequential decision making, payment) were not associated with cooperation. Overall, these findings inform institutions that can (or not) facilitate cooperation.

Why Neighbors Would Help: A Vignette Experiment on Reciprocity in Informal Helping

Article

Apr 2024

Reciprocity in informal helping, or informal volunteering, is often seen as a way to ensure that people who are not altruistically motivated exchange help. Yet, it could be problematic for those who are unable to help, as they would be excluded from this exchange. We study to what extent people’s reciprocity expectations affect informal helping intentions and whether necessity of helping and perceived helpfulness (indirect reciprocity) compensate and moderate this relationship. Expectations are tested with a factorial survey conducted among the Longitudinal Internet studies for the Social Sciences panel ( N vignettes = 3,299). Multilevel regression analyses show that people have stronger intentions to help those who are likely to reciprocate but that a strong need for help and having helped others in the past are more important reasons to help. Furthermore, the effect of likelihood of reciprocity on informal helping intentions is stronger for neighbors who never helped others. Policy implications of these results are discussed.

Altruism Advertises Generosity

Chapter

Apr 2021

Cooperative Networks: Altruism, Group Solidarity, Reciprocity, and Sanctioning in Ugandan Producer Organizations 1

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2015

Delia Baldassarri

Repeated interaction and social networks are commonly considered viable solutions to collective action problems. This article identifies and systematically measures four general mechanisms—that is, generalized altruism, group solidarity, reciprocity, and the threat of sanctioning— and tests which of them brings about cooperation in the context of Ugandan producer organizations. Using an innovative methodological framework that combines “lab-in-the-field” experiments with survey interviews and complete social networks data, the article goes beyond the assessment of a relationship between social networks and collective outcomes to study the mechanisms that favor cooperative behavior. The article first establishes a positive relationship between position in the network structure and propensity to cooperate in the producer organization and then uses farmers’ behavior in dictator and public goods games to test different mechanisms that may account for such a relationship. Results show that cooperation is induced by patterns of reciprocity that emerge through repeated interaction rather than other-regarding preferences like altruism or group solidarity.

The Norm of Self-Interest

Article

Full-text available

Dec 1999

Dale T. Miller

The self-interest motive is singularly powerful according to many of the most influential theories of human behavior and the layperson alike. In the present article the author examines the role the assumption of self-interest plays in its own confirmation. It is proposed that a norm exists in Western cultures that specifies self-interest both is and ought to be a powerful determinant of behavior. This norm influences people's actions and opinions as well as the accounts they give for their actions and opinions. In particular; it leads people to act and speak as though they care more about their material self-interest than they do. Consequences of misinterpreting the "fact" of self-interest are discussed.

Do Reputation Systems Undermine Trust? Divergent Effects of Enforcement Type on Generalized Trust and Trustworthiness

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2015

Ko Kuwabara

Research shows that enforcing cooperation using contracts or tangible sanctions can backfire, undermining people’s intrinsic motivation to cooperate: when the enforcement is removed, people are less trusting or trustworthy than when there is no enforcement to begin with. The author examines whether reputation systems have similar consequences for generalized trust and trustworthiness. Using a web-based experiment simulating online market transactions (studies 1 and 2), he shows that reputation systems can reinforce generalized trust and trustworthiness, unlike contractual enforcement or relational enforcement based on repeated interactions. In a survey experiment (study 3), he finds that recalling their eBay feedback scores made participants more trusting and trustworthy. These results are predicated on the diffuse nature of reputational enforcement to reinforce perceptions of trust and trustworthiness. These results have implications for understanding how different forms of governance affect generalized trust and trustworthiness.

Self-Perception Theory

Chapter

Full-text available

Dec 1972
ADV EXP SOC PSYCHOL

Daryl Bem

Publisher Summary Individuals come to “know” their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior and/ or the circumstances in which this behavior occurs. Thus, to the extent that internal cues are weak, ambiguous, or uninterpretable, the individual is functionally in the same position as an outside observer, an observer who must necessarily rely upon those same external cues to infer the individual's inner states. This chapter traces the conceptual antecedents and empirical consequences of these propositions, attempts to place the theory in a slightly enlarged frame of reference, and clarifies just what phenomena the theory can and cannot account for in the rapidly growing experimental literature of self-attribution phenomena. Several experiments and paradigms from the cognitive dissonance literature are amenable to self-perception interpretations. But precisely because such experiments are subject to alternative interpretations, they cannot be used as unequivocal evidence for self-perception theory. The reinterpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena and other self-perception phenomena have been discussed. The chapter highlights some differences between self-perception and interpersonal perception and shift of paradigm in social psychology. It discusses some unsolved problems, such as the conceptual status of noncognitive response classes and the strategy of functional analysis.

Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement

Book

Jan 1991

Dennis Chong

Self-perception theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.)

Article

Jan 1972
ADV EXP SOC PSYCHOL

D.J. Bem

The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy

Article

Nov 1997
PUBLIC HEALTH

Richard M. Titmuss

Mobilizing in Black Boxes: Social Networks and Participation in Social Movement Organizations

Article

Sep 2000

James Kitts

Recent research has focused on the role of social networks in facilitating participation in protest and social movement organizations. This paper elaborates three currents of microstructural explanation, based on information, identity, and exchange. In assessing these perspectives, it compares their treatment of multivalence, the tendency for social ties to inhibit as well as promote participation. Considering two dimensions of multivalence—the value of the social tie and the direction of social pressure—this paper discusses problems of measurement and interpretation in network analysis of movement participation. A critical review suggests some directions for future research.

Do Status Hierarchies Benefit Groups? A Bounded Functionalist Account of Status

Article

Apr 2014

Scholars have long debated the impact of status hierarchies on group welfare. On the one hand, functionalist accounts posit that the status hierarchies that emerge within groups benefit those groups by providing order, coordination, and incentives for individual sacrifice. In contrast, critical accounts argue that status hierarchies are only loosely tied to merit, create divisions among individuals, foster mistrust, and hamper communication and collective success. The current chapter integrates these two opposing views by proposing a bounded functionalist perspective of status hierarchies. Specifically, we argue that group members strive to form functional hierarchies that will foster their collective success, but they are constrained in their ability to do so by the difficulties in allocating status based on merit and by the opposing force of individual self-interest. © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014. All rights are reserved.

Formal Models of Collective Action

Article

Jan 1993
ANNU REV SOCIOL

Pamela E. Oliver

This review focuses on formal theories and models of collective action. There are many types of collective action, and they cannot all be captured with the same formal model. Four types of models are reviewed: single-actor models which treat the “group” behavior as given; models of the interdependent aggregation of individual choices into collective action; models of the collective decisions of individuals with different interests; and models of the dynamic interactions among collective actors and their opponents. All models require simplifying assumptions about some aspects of a situation so that others may be addressed. Models of the aggregation of individual choices have shown the greatest recent growth, have employed a wide variety of assumptions about individual behavior and coordination mechanisms, have identified complex interaction effects of group heterogeneity, and generally exhibit thresholds, discontinuities, and internal group differentiation. Models of dynamic interactions require further development but promise to be enriched by accumulating empirical time series data on collective events. Greater attention is urged to technical issues of formal symbolic mathematical analysis, experimental design, response surface analysis, and technical problems in the reduction and presentation of complex interactions.

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