Research Paper
Abstract
The goal of this study was to determine whether social value orientation (as measured by the Triple Dominance Measure) allow us to predict people’s decisions in situations where their decisions could affect many people (be it environmental, political, social issues affecting communities). According to Paul Van Lange Et al. (1997), Social Value Orientation (SVO) is related to cooperative behavior in social dilemmas. In two scenarios, researching incorporates decisions making skills in financial benefits (scenarios 1) and Community benefits (scenarios 2) as per the research. It shows that many differences accompany SVO as per the many dependable differences in the data collected. The study analysis relates decision time, number of complexities, the amount of studied information, the amount of attention towards others, and the amount of evolvements from and towards the others, payouts gradually rises with absolute SVO deviation from a biased direction.
Method
The final report was a result of several methods and studies. In method one, People volunteered to give out information based on the subject in two phases. One thousand, two hundred and twenty eight people participated in the first phase (time 1) and 2,360 individuals in the second phase (time 2). There were Individuals who took part in both phases. They were 805 in number. Fifty four percent of those who took part in phase 1 were men while women took 46%.during the second phase; men took 56% and the women 44%. Their ages ranged from 15 years to 89 years. Here the triple dominance of social values provided the basis of assessment
In the second method, the information got from the first method provided the integrative model of the social value orientations. In this, a prisoner dilemma was used .this is where an individual’s choice could be influenced by a single choice of a partner.one hundred and ninety students participated in this. The experimental design was a three (social value orientation vs individualistic versus competitors). Participants groped themselves into groups of 8 to 14 people. They were to select individual cubicles before getting their tasks. The tasks were in different games: a series of nine games, a single trial prisoner’s dilemma task, and a set of 20 games situations and finally ratings of the participants.
The third study relied on the second study that provided support for the hypothesis. It was more of an extension to study two where the single trial prisoner dilemma came in handy. They made choices by self and the others simultaneously. The study examined implicit reciprocity by taking the frequency with which the participants exhibited the same level of cooperation. It incorporated 168 participants. The social orientation of the participants was assessed using the ring measure of social values. The method tested the link between the social value orientation and the tendency to make exactly the same choice as they were expected. It also consisted twenty-four pairs of combinations defined in terms of money, though imaginary. Participants whose social value vectors lied between 22.50 and 112.50 were classified as “prosocial” an those with vectors between 337.50 (or -22.5 0) and 22.5 0 were considered “individualistic” (McClintock & Liebrand, 1998).for a participant’s finding to be considered , there had to be 50% consistence in their choices.
Results
In method 1, the weights assigned to the equality in outcomes were calculated in a similar manner. The variance between the outcomes ranged from 280.00 to 364.80. These absolute differences were translated into weights ranging from -1.00 to 1.00. A perfectly cooperative orientation (Maxjoint) gave the –weights as 0.707, the second one as 0.707 and the third weight as0= 0.00. For a perfectly individualistic orientation (MaxOwn), the weights were 1.00, 0.00, and 0.00. The results were best measured in an orthogonal way.
In the second method, the design provided insight to the social stability. There was a significant relationship between time 1 and time 2. The value of social orientation was therefore χ2 (4, N = 581) = 43.00, p‹ 0.001. This showed that 59% of the participants expressed the same social orientation at both ties. The analysis revealed three effects being: social value orientation F (2, 115) = 16.80, p < .001, cooperation being the second and the third one revealing interactions between the social value orientation and the partner’s orientation, F (4,226) = 6.37, p< .001. The prosocial tended to show almost similar levels of cooperation though slightly lower than the levels of the partners. The third study showed the percentages of the prosocial, individualists and the competitors who expected their counterparts to do better to them than they did.
Discussion
The research sought to address the meaning of social orientation therefore extending and complimenting the traditional models that have brought differences between the prosocial, individualists and the competitors. In model one; we could observe that the orientations and evaluation was different. Model two provided information about conceptualization of the different orientations. It showed how different orientations were likely to respond to different situations. The third model shows the maximization of joint incomes by prosocial orientation. They are however concerned about outcomes which may not be necessarily true in matter concerning collective outcomes.
Majority of the prosocial had almost the same level of cooperation as they expected from their peers. The findings somehow suggest that outcomes, both joint and equality in outcomes, contributes towards a better-established link between expectation regarding partners ‘cooperation and own cooperation.
References
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