The Prisoners’ and Social Dilemmas

This chapter discusses situations in which people make decisions influenced by other decision-makers. In many cases, the imperative to maximize personal expected utility conflicts with other people’s opportunity to maximize their outcomes or outcomes for groups of people. These kinds of decisions are a form of economic game played between people. They are interesting because they show that people tend to place relationships with other people above their interests. The chapter discusses the psychological processes that underlie behaviour in the prisoners’ dilemma and social dilemmas using examples that include nuclear weapons and recycling.