Co-PI: Monica Whitham Institution: University of Arizona
Research suggests that generalized exchange is positively associated with a variety of social gains. However, cooperative participation in generalized exchange involves risk. This study examines the potential of two forms of social identity - categorically-based social identity and symbolic social network ties - to motivate cooperation in spite of this risk. A series of experiments will be conducted to investigate whether social identity enhances cooperation in generalized exchange, whether symbolic social network ties produce greater cooperation than categorical social identity, and how risk effects these relationships.
Broader Impacts: Understanding how properties of a collectivity may enhance cooperation in generalized exchange can help social entities such as communities or organizations tap into the various social benefits of generalized exchange.
This research project was designed to further current understanding of motivations for generosity in generalized exchange, an important form of pro-social behavior. When a person gives to another who will not directly repay the benefits, she is participating in generalized exchange—the practice of doing something good for someone now with the expectation of being rewarded by someone else in the future. Examples include various ways of "paying it forward," such as giving a stranger directions or donating blood. Generalized exchange is an important resource for both individuals and collectivities, with such benefits as building solidarity and enhancing social capital. However, generalized exchange involves greater risk than other forms of social exchange because repayment is indirect—benefits given to another actor are repaid by some other actor at another point in time. Most research on overcoming this risk has focused on reputation-based strategic solutions for encouraging cooperation. Unfortunately, although reputation-based giving strategies can be quite effective at reducing the risk of nonreciprocity in generalized exchange, they tend to be both complex and information intensive. To understand how this risk might be overcome while avoiding these complexities and complications, we investigated social identity as a potential motivating force for cooperation. Social identity is the aspect of the self that is derived from membership in categories and groups (e.g., ‘I am a woman,’ ‘I am a sociologist’). Sharing a social identity with others has been found to motivate ingroup cooperation among actors in a variety of situations. We extend this line of research to include generalized exchange systems. We designed an experimental test of the impact of social identity on cooperation in generalized exchange. We also assessed differences in the impact of social identity stemming from mutual category memberships (e.g., gender, race) versus social identity stemming from mutual group memberships (e.g., a baseball team, an academic department). Our findings indicate generalized exchange systems characterized by a shared social identity have higher rates of cooperation than do generalized exchange systems not characterized by a shared social identity. However, we found interesting differences in the effects of categorically-based and entity-based social identity. Categorically-based social identity has been found to be a strong motivator of pro-social behavior, but it fell short of consistently overcoming the risk involved in generalized exchange and promoting cooperation. Entity-based social identity, however, was found to be a strong enough motivator to overcome this risk and promote cooperative behavior. This finding suggests further research is needed to assess differences between categorically-based and entity-based social identity, a distinction that is often overlooked in social identity research. In addition to its academic contributions, the project has broader impacts for social life. We investigated the potential for attributes of a collectivity to 1) promote individual generosity and 2) motivate individual commitment to a group effort. Our findings serve as a resource for identifying strategies that can guide groups such as non-profit organizations (e.g., The Red Cross, The Sierra Club) and community groups (e.g., veterans associations, volunteer fire departments) in their efforts to promote collective action in pursuit of shared goals, motivate active membership, encourage volunteers, and secure donations.
