The Effect of Prior Cooperation and Competition on Approaches to a Decomposed Social Dilemma

The effect of cooperation and competition in a primer task upon subject's later choice of strategy in a social dilemma was examined. The effect of explicit and implicit instructions and cooperative and competitive milieu on subjects' behavior, individually and as a team, during both the primer task and the social dilemma was also examined. Male and female subjects participated in a naval simulation task under Implicit-Cooperative, Explicit-Cooperative, Implicit-Competitive, and Explicit-Competitive instructions and later participated in a prisoner's dilemma game. Simmons, Wehner, Tucker, and King's (1987) Cooperative / Competitive Strategy Scale was used as a covariate. A significant effect of instructions was found for the primer task but not for the strategy used in the social dilemma. No transfer of cooperation or competition was found from the constrained primer task to the unrestrained experimental task. There was partial support for the effects of milieu on the subject's behavior.