"By not considering that a variety of motives and beliefs might affect behaviour (within and across individuals) in a given situation, we limit our understanding of how co-operation could emerge from a mixture of motives that by themselves might not lead to co-operation," wrote Lívia Markóczy of the University of California-Riverside. She went on to analyze, based on a review of previous studies, the various motives that could lead someone to cooperate (or not) with their teammates in a particular situation. It is important to note that she did not address cooperation between groups, because as you'll see, some motives that would decrease cooperation within the little world of the team could also increase it were the team pitted against another one.
Markóczy suggested the decision to cooperate starts with the situation. Aspects such as the size of the group, how well you know the others, and what has happened before in similar situations can by themselves affect the decision of whether to cooperate. Next add in your general beliefs. The degree to which you believe you personally can change a situation to help the group, the more cooperative you're likely to be, but the size of the group affects that sense of "efficacy": you'll likely assume you have less influence in a larger group. Similarly, the more trusting you are in others, the more likely you are to cooperate with them, but that level of trust goes up when you know people better. Another belief that is the idea that if you cooperate with others, they will return that cooperation.
The situation and your beliefs, Markóczy argued, combine to create a prediction about how a situation will come out, which adds into your decision to cooperate. If you trust others in a group and the group has lived up to the trust, you expect trusting them to turn out well. That, in turn, makes you more willing to cooperate. The story becomes more complicated if you trust people in general, but the group has not proven trustworthy in the past.
At this point, she said, more specific motives enter the picture. Altruism obviously leads to cooperation. But the research says it can be heavily affected by how similar you are to the group, among other things, and the situation, such as (again) how much the others have cooperated. "Elite participants," people who like to "make a difference and to start out something new," are likely to cooperate if they think it will help them achieve something, However, they might lose interest more quickly if the movement they help start becomes popular, because then they want to move on to something new. The opposite type, the "mass participant" who likes to be involved in something big, is not enough by itself to get someone to cooperate, Markóczy said, but could kick it into gear when a project becomes a big deal.
An obvious combination of situation and motive is "fairness": someone driven by the need to be fair (or fairly treated) will definitely react according to how much others are cooperating. On the other hand, "greed" might seem like the kind of motive that prevents someone from cooperating with others. Yet if the situation leads that person to think cooperating will help them get more for themselves, it could cause greater cooperation. "Fear" of being betrayed would clearly reduce the tendency to cooperate.
The article mentions a perhaps surprising motive: "Beating the system (cool)," defined as "the desire to distinguish oneself from the crowd." Markóczy found little research on this, but noted that "the cool motive would lead to co-operation if others were not co-operating while leading to non-co-operation if others are co-operating."
Combining one's expectation about how cooperation will turn out with these motives is what brings us to our decision to cooperate, and how much, Markóczy wrote. Of course, sometimes motives conflict, making the decision difficult. Other times several act at once, and of course, on a team of people who are cooperating, they could be doing so for quite a wide range of reasons. You can't rely on people's opinions afterward; when motives conflict, Markóczy wrote, "the individual may be able to recall and recognize only those motives that are consistent with the decision, suppressing the inconsistent ones." Markóczy said these conclusions are "unattractive," because they mean it will be very hard to come up with one "grand theory that will explain all the motives and their relations to other factors." The plus side is that they also could lead to more realistic research into cooperation and therefore better guidance for those of us dedicated to increasing cooperation in groups.
Source: Markóczy, L. (04), "Multiple Motives Behind Single Acts of Co-operation," International Journal of Human Resource Management 15(6):1018.
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© 2009 by Jim Morgan. All rights reserved.