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A social dilemma occurs when an individual’s self-interest conflicts with the interests of a larger social group, resulting in a worse outcome for everyone if each individual maximizes their own advantage. Game theorists study this phenomenon, with the prisoner’s dilemma being a classic example. The tragedy of the commons is another game-theoretic conundrum that illustrates the problem of social dilemmas in the real world. Solutions involve identifying situations where social behavior benefits all participants and making them aware of this fact.
A social dilemma is a situation in which the narrow self-interest of an individual and the interests of a larger social group are directly at odds and in which, if each individual attempts to maximize his own advantage at the expense of the group, each member of the group experiences a worse net outcome than if they had adopted a cooperative strategy. The idea of the social dilemma has been much studied by game theorists. The prisoner’s dilemma is a good example of a social dilemma. In the real world, a social dilemma often takes the form of one or more individuals attempting to benefit from public services, which they then attempt not to pay for, or attempt to avoid responsibility for some indirect cost of their actions, such as environmental pollution .
In the prisoner’s dilemma, game theorists imagine a situation in which two criminals are individually interrogated by the police. If one criminal convicts another, then the convicting criminal goes free, and the convict gets a ten-year prison sentence. If both remain silent, then they are both charged with misdemeanors and spend six months in prison. If both convict, both spend five years in prison. In this situation, inmates working to maximize their personal benefit would always convict both, even though this represents a suboptimal solution to the social dilemma, as they would spend a total of ten years, rather than one year, in prison.
The problem illustrated by this approach to a social dilemma emerges clearly when one examines concrete issues. It is in everyone’s best interest to avoid paying taxes and receiving government benefits. If everyone somehow avoided paying taxes, the result for society would be disastrous. If everyone paid taxes reliably and honestly, the overall efficiency of government would improve, fewer resources would be wasted on tax collection, and the total net tax burden imposed on society would decrease.
A second game-theoretic conundrum, the tragedy of the commons, illustrates even more clearly the problem of social dilemmas in the real world. In this game each participant has access to a private resource but also to a shared public resource. A purely selfish participant will derive maximum value from the shared resource, even to the point of harming it, before drawing on a private resource, a process which ultimately leads to worse outcomes for all. The excessive use of public land, air and water resources is sometimes cited as a real version of this social dilemma. Individuals who act rationally place unsustainable demands on resources and damage their ability to produce in the future.
Attempts to escape social dilemmas typically focus on ways of identifying situations in which social behavior would provide major benefits to all participants and making them aware of this fact. A modified version of the prisoner’s dilemma, in which the same two people play over and over again, leads to more cooperative strategies.
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