Social Dilemmas: Behavior With and Without Communication

Abstract

"In the context of individual and group decision making, the presence of social dilemmas imply a divergence between expected outcomes and outcomes that would be optimal from the perspective of the group. The presence of social dilemmas and the degree of predicted suboptimality depends on three components of the decision situation: (1) the existence of a physical domain in which there are externalities in production or consumption, (2) modes of behavior in which individuals make decisions based on calculations that do not fully incorporate the utilities of others, and (3) environments or institutional settings that do or do not create incentives for internalizing such externalities into individuals' decision calculus."