Humans choose representatives who enforce cooperation in social dilemmas through extortion
Open accessAbstract
Social dilemmas force players to balance between personal and collective gain. In many dilemmas, such as elected governments negotiating climate-change mitigation measures, the decisions are made not by individual players but by their representatives. However, the behaviour of representatives in social dilemmas has not been investigated experimentally. Here inspired by the negotiations for greenhouse-gas emissions reductions, we experimentally study a collective-risk social dilemma that involves representatives deciding on behalf of their fellow group members. Representatives can be re-elected or voted out after each consecutive collective-risk game. Selfish players are preferentially elected and are hence found most frequently in the ‘representatives’ treatment. Across all treatments, we identify the selfish players as extortioners. As predicted by our mathematical model, their steadfast strategies enforce cooperation from fair players who finally compensate almost completely the deficit caused by the extortionate co-players. Everybody gains, but the extortionate representatives and their groups gain the most.
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Laboratory research has found that people prioritize local over global (or international) interests.
“Indeed, laboratory research has found that people prioritize local over global (or international) interests 185,186 .”
From Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response (2020) · cites this paper as [185]
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- Authors
- Milinski, M., Hilbe, C., Semmann, D., Sommerfeld, R., & Marotzke, J.
- Affiliations
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology (DE)
- Harvard University (US)
- Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Milinski, Manfred
- Hilbe, Christian
- Marotzke, Jochem
- Venue
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2016-03-07
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 10915-10915
- ISSN
- 2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4786683
- OpenAlex
- W2294583806
- Cited by
- 62
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 2
- FWCI
- 15.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Nature Communications (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Game Theory and Applications
- Keywords
- social dilemmas, elected officials, extortion, cooperation enforcement, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, climate change negotiations
- MeSH terms
- Cooperative Behavior, Female, Game Theory, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Male, Models, Theoretical, Young Adult, Climate Change
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