 This is part four of lecture nine. So far, we already saw that groups do not always have the best effect on us. And unfortunately, I do not have a different message from you in this last part of the lecture. And this part, we're gonna be talking about social dilemmas. And in order to introduce this topic, let me take you back to Groningen, a Dutch city in the northern part of the Netherlands, 1978. An actual event happened there. At the countryside, it was really, really cold, an extremely cold winter. And the electricity wires were frozen. So that means that there was no heating and no hot water, which was actually very seriously dangerous situation. Luckily, there was a local smith that had a generator that could provide electricity for all households. However, this would only work if people would follow the following rules. First of all, the maximum temperature in the house could not exceed 18 degrees Celsius. They only could light one lamp, no television, and also no use of hot water. If everybody would follow these rules, then this generator would hold it and would make it possible for all the households to be at least a little bit comfortable. So, wonderful solution, right? Problem solved, of course not, because humans do not always follow rules. We sometimes do, but also sometimes don't. And especially in circumstances like this, we oftentimes do not follow rules. And here you see what happens. People just simply close the curtains. They lit up the house, started watching television and taking Beth together, apparently. So, yeah, within moments, actually, this emergency generator broke down. And everybody was super freezing cold. Again, it could also not be fixed, so they just had to wait until the electricity wires were repaired, which took quite some time. So, even though there was a solution, it failed because of how human beings behaved. So, this is actually a situation that social psychologists refer to as a social dilemma. And a social dilemma is a conflict between your self-interest and the interest of the entire group. And it's also specifically a situation in which everybody would love to be selfish. And if everybody is selfish, then the whole group loses. So, it's a trade-off, right? Every person, every unique individual wants to be selfish. Of course, everybody wants to take hot baths and baths and also watch television and light up the house. But if everybody does that, then the outcome for the entire group is horrible. It's worse, you know? An example of a social dilemma. And social dilemmas are at the very heart of a lot of huge problems in society. So, let me take you back to lecture one. You remember? I asked you about the biggest problems that we are currently facing in society. And the first thing I mentioned is I think the biggest problem that we are all facing is climate change, global warming. So, this is actually, it's a beautiful example. It's a horrible situation, but a beautiful example of a social dilemma. So, the question that I raised in lecture one is why do we behave in ways that are damaging us in the long run? And that is because during global warming, when we make our daily decisions on how we, you know, go about our ways and basically use nature or the climate in order to make ourselves comfortable, there's always a trade-off. Being polluting, that's oftentimes very nice for people, you know? It's better to be comfortable in your own car, you know, heating up that car, riding, driving around. That's way more comfortable than taking public transportation often or taking maybe your bike, which is even better, of course. So, for civilians, for individuals, it is sort of, it pays off to basically show polluting behavior. And also, when you talk about the bigger scope, the scope of the countries, polluting factories and industries, they give a lot of financial advantages. So, also for countries, it's actually on the short run, very rewarding to behave in polluting ways. But of course, yeah, ideally, every country would like to continue to pollute. That would be best for them. And as civilians, we love just to continue heating up our houses and eating meat and flying to Ibiza for our holidays. But at the same time, we also now, by now, know that if we all do so, everybody loses. And we're already losing quite a lot. We see that global warming is real and we experience it every summer again when we're breaking records and every winter again when things are heating up. And we have all these horrible crises, hurricanes, floods over the entire globe, and of course, also drought. So, every country and the whole world has a major problem if we continue polluting, okay? So, what we have to do is work together in order to increase people's motivation to do something for the group and ignore their desire or not act on the desire to behave in a way that's self-interested. So, when it comes to global warming, climate change, social dilemmas are really important to understand. It's actually also important to understand for another question that I raised in lecture one, why is it so hard for people to follow rules that are essential for human health? Of course, something that we have to deal with when we are facing a pandemic, the COVID rules. I think we all know what they are and we all know that they are important to stop the virus, but also at the same time for us as individuals, they're not fun. You know, we don't like to keep distance from people that we love. We like to party and we like to, you know, shop and stay close to each other. So yeah, we also have this incentive to be self-interested. So following the COVID rules is also this dilemma between, you know, doing what is good for the group and sort of making sure that this virus is not spreading so hard. And at the same time, you have this desire to also, yeah, do something that is good for you as an individual. So how can we go about this? How can we solve social dilemmas? Well, that's of course very complicated and in order to simplify, social psychologists have used paradigms, sort of artificial paradigms to see if we can sort of increase people's tendency to behave in a way that's good for the group. And one strategy that turns out to be very successful is the tit for tat strategy. It's very simple, very straightforward. If you're negotiating with another party, for example, if you have countries that are sitting together in a climate conference and they have to talk about, okay, what are you going to do to, you know, make sure that we protect the earth and stop polluting our surroundings, then you have to, you can use a strategy in which you start cooperative. So you start by saying something that you're gonna do to address the problem. So you start positive and then after that, you just follow the moves of the other person. So in the beginning, you're forgiving. Basically, your first move is pro-social in favor of the group and then after that, you see how the other party is responding and what you of course hope is that the other party is mimicking you, conforming to your behavior and also saying, okay, if you're willing to close down that factory, then we're willing to also close down this factory and then you can, you know, hopefully come in this vicious cycle that you work together and solve the problem. But sometimes you're talking to a party and that's not willing to cooperate and it's not doing anything. The tit for tat strategy would advise you to do not go any further and not cooperate with a non-cooperative partner. So you're not gonna be exploited. So the moment you start being cooperative, but if the other party doesn't reply that, you don't do it and you're also not being a cooperative again. So it's an equal strategy, easy to understand. And in the end, hopefully leads to more cooperation. So this has been studied in, I think rather artificial paradigms in a laboratory setting. And personally, I do not think that this is a strategy that is very straightforwardly implemented in societal issues and also in other issues in which you have to negotiate with each other. For example, very difficult procedures, divorce procedures or other procedures in which you have to negotiate. I think the tit for tat strategy is pretty difficult. But what you then should keep in mind is try to search for an integrative solution. And an integrative solution is if you have to negotiate with another party in which you're actually in conflict or you're not really able to work together very well, then you have to look for a solution in which you make trade-offs. You give up on some aspects. Maybe you say, okay, I'll make sure that I'll decrease the prices on public transportation. That's something that we can do. And the other group saying, okay, I will close this polluting factory. So you have to come up with solutions that work for both of you. It doesn't have to be the same thing. You don't have to immediately mimic what the other party is doing. You have to come up with things that work for you. And if you do so, if you give up on issues, basically that are not so important for you and stick your grounds for the things that are important to you, then you come closer to a solution. And this integrative solution is actually something that also mediators oftentimes look for when, for example, they're working on a very difficult lawsuit. Okay, so this is the end of the part on social dilemmas and also the end of lecture nine.