Beyond self-interest in social dilemmas : a relational model of co-operation

The first part of this thesis describes three experiments examining the validity of two competing hypotheses (i.e. goal-transformation vs. goal-amplification hypothesis) regarding the effect of group identification on elementary co-operation. The results revealed that enhancing group identification promotes contributions, because it transforms concerns for personal outcomes to concerns for collective outcomes (i.e. goal-transformation hypothesis). Thus, high group identification seems to shift concerns for outcomes from the personal to the collective level.The second part of this thesis examined the effect of group identification on preferences for a leader to manage a public goods dilemma (i.e. instrumental co-operation). First, it was found that leaders were preferred most under conditions of failure, demonstrating the importance of instrumental concerns. However, low identifiers preferred the adoption of a leader structure more than high identifiers. Second, preferences for specific leader types were also influenced by group identification. High identifiers were found to exhibit a greater preference for leaders contributing positively to relationships within the group (i.e. legitimate leader types) than low identifiers, indicating that relational concerns come into play when making a decision which type of leader to introduce.The final part focused on the effect of group identification on people's willingness to co-operate with an established group leader (i.e. structural co-operation). Assuming that people feel uncertain about their relationships with authorities, group identification was expected to influence mainly relational concerns, and these would be more important when group identification is high. The results revealed, indeed, that leaders who contributed positively to the quality of relations (i.e. fair acting and strongly identifying group leaders) promoted contributions when group identification was high rather than low. Moreover, relational leaders were also found to influence high identifiers self-esteem, indicating that relational leader behaviour communicates social identity information.The main conclusion drawn from this line of research is that both instrumental and relational concerns may underlie co-operation. However, depending on the extent to which people identify with their group, more weight may be attached to relational than to instrumental concerns, consequently influencing level of elementary, instrumental and structural co-operation. From this perspective, a relational model of co-operation is discussed.