The Impact of Culture on Cooperation in Social Dilemmas

Abstract

Social dilemmas are situations in which individual and common interests are in conflict. In such situations, while individuals have an incentive to pursue their own short-term self-interests, individual payoffs are greater if the members of the group choose to cooperate and pursue the common interest instead. The social dilemmas literature suggests that trust has a direct and positive effect on cooperation in a given group, as it reduces fear of exploitation, making cooperation less risky. However, a stream of research in that literature also suggests that the effect of trust is not universal. The segregated nature of a collectivist society and its strong in-group ties promote trust in group members but discourage trust of outsiders. The opposite is true in individualist cultures where cross-group relationships are supported resulting in a higher level of generalized trust. Multilevel modeling of data from the third wave of the joint EVS-WVS7 (2017-2022) tested the effect of trust across cultures for various measures of cooperation and defection including membership in a charitable or environmental organization, willingness to fight for the country, cheating on taxes, and claiming improper government benefits. The models account for countries’ individualism score measured on the Hofstede scale of individualism for 58 different countries. Findings varied across the different cooperation variables, indicating that culture affects cooperation differently across countries depending on the level of trust of their citizens and the nature of cooperative action.