Journal
JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 95, Issue 6, Pages 1340-1353Publisher
AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
DOI: 10.1037/a0012454
Keywords
cooperation; social dilemma; decision making; rational choice; public good; norms; consistent contributor
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Groups and organizations face a fundamental problem: They need cooperation but their members have incentives to free fide. Empirical research on this problem has often been discouraging. and economic models suggest that solutions are unlikely or unstable. In contrast, the authors present a model and 4 studies that show that an unwaveringly consistent contributor can effectively catalyze cooperation in social dilemmas. The studies indicate that consistent contributors occur naturally, and their presence in a group causes others to contribute more and cooperate more often, with no apparent cost to the consistent contributor and often gain. These positive effects seem to result from a consistent contributor's impact on group members' cooperative inferences about group norms.
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