Value Orientation and Conformity

Abstract

Three different types of N-person social dilemma games were employed: the Prisoner's Dilemma (NPD), the Chicken Dilemma (NCD), and the Trust Dilemma (NTD). Subjects, who were classified a priori as either a cooperator (n = 58) or a defector (n = 68), participated in one of the social dilemma games before they received bogus feedback: they were told that the majority had chosen the defecting alternative D, or that the majority had chosen the cooperative alternative C. As predicted, (1) both before and after feedback, more defecting choices were made in the NPD than in the NCD, whereas in the NCD more defecting choices were made than in the NTD; (2) before and after feedback, defectors made more defecting choices than cooperators; (3) after majority D feedback more defecting choices were made than after majority C feedback. In addition, it appeared that in NPD and in NTD, defectors were especially sensitive to majority D feedback in that it facilitated their natural inclination to prefer D-choices. No support for Kelley and Stahelski's triangle hypothesis was observed.