Social Decision Heuristics in the Use of Shared Resources

Abstract

The goals of the present study were (1) to demonstrate again that subjects in social decision tasks involving shared resources cannot be modelled as strategic money maximizers, and (2) to investigate further factors that affect the use of what we have called social decision heuristics. Subjects were led to believe that they were the first of six group members to extract points from a common pool of points. Each point extracted could possibly be exchanged for cash. The independent variables were the magnitude of the payoffs that subjects could receive (high vs. low), the divisibility of the resource (divisible vs. nondivisible), the perceived control of the last members over the group's outcomes (fate control vs. no fate control), and subjects' social values (cooperative vs. noncooperative). The results indicated that subjects anchored their decisions on an equal division heuristic. Subjects withdrew the fewest number of points when the resource was divisible, the payoffs were low, and there was fate control. The most points were taken when the resource was nondivisible, the payoffs were high, and subjects were classified as noncooperative. A model of the choice process in this task is discussed.