8.13 Social Traps

Transcript

When an individual does something—like leave work right at 5 o’clock—they may feel that their action is harmless—they simply want to get home as early as possible.

However, if everyone has an identical approach and conveniently leaves at the same exact time, collective harm is done because resources are limited—there’s now a traffic jam due to sharing insufficient roads!

This example is a collective social trap—a situation in which a group of people act to obtain short-term individual gains that, in the long run, may lead to undesirable effects for the group as a whole.

As many drivers continue to pursue their own interests, like thinking that the gap means one lane is moving much faster than another, such paths can fuel social conflict—a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas.

With such congestion, everyone will be late to arrive home. Now, he must wait even longer! In this case, he’s so caught up in the process—swearing and complaining—and the last thought on his mind is respect and fairness for all commuters.

While social traps are hard to dismantle, one possible solution is to implement tactics and policies to improve situations, such as shifting hours to produce staggered departure times or, if carpooling, pay reduced tolls.

In the end, resolving exposed traps—and not falling prey—is important to prevent unfavorable outcomes that may not be obvious in the beginning.

Social traps are negative situations where people get caught in a direction or relationship that later proves to be unpleasant, with no easy way to back out of or avoid. The concept was orignally introduced by John Platt who applied psychology to Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons", where in New England herd owners could let their cattle graze in the common ground. This situation seems like a good idea, but an individual could have an advantage. If they owned more cows, the larger herds would deplete the grass, and excessive herds and overgrazing can destroy the field and result in a collective loss for everyone (Hardin, 1968). Platt recognized that people who operated on short-term gains had a tendency to exploit resouirces, which led to long-term losses for society.

Applications

In addition to congested highways, you might know someone who's purchased a gas-guzzler when the price of gas became low due to high supply. What happens when more people do the same, fueling their vehicles with more gas, which in turn depletes the supply? The same pattern can be found in the way people think about environmental contamination. For instance, one farmer uses pesticides to get rid of a few pests. He thinks no one will even notice, but then his neighbors do the same thing, and over time, they collectively cause damage to the town's water supply.

Transcript

Suggested Reading