Social trap is a term used by psychologists to describe a situation in which a group of people act to obtain short-term individual gains, which in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole. Examples of social traps include the overharvesting of fish species by commercial and sport fishers, the near-extinction of the American bison, energy "brownout" and "blackout" power outages during periods of extreme temperatures, the overgrazing of cattle on the Sahelian Desert, and the destruction of the rainforest by logging interests and agriculture. The Dodo, shown here in illustration, is an often-cited[1] example of modern extinction. ... Binomial name yellow (Linnaeus, 1758) Subspecies B. b. ... Tree limbs create a short circuit in electrical lines during a storm. ... In ecology and agriculture, overgrazing occurs when plants are exposed to grazing for too long, or without sufficient recovery periods. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... This article is about the rainforest in general. ... Loggers on break, c. ...

Origin of the concept

The term "social trap" was first introduced to the scientific community by John Platt's 1973 paper in American Psychologist. The term was developed in an interdisciplinary symposium held at the University of Michigan (Cross & Guyer, 1980). Building upon the concept of the "tragedy of the commons" in Garrett Hardin's pivotal article in Science (1968), Platt and others in the seminar applied behavioral psychology concepts to actions of people operating in social traps. Using a behavioral analysis based upon the work of B.F. Skinner (1938, 1948, 1953, 1957) and his colleagues (Keller and Schoenfeld, 1950) Platt, recognized that individuals operating for short-term positive reinforcement had a tendency to over-exploit the resource which led to a long-term negative loss to society. The American Psychologist is the official journal of the American Psychological Association. ... The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (UM, U of M or U-M) is a coeducational public research university in the U.S. state of Michigan. ... It has been suggested that Tyranny of the Commons be merged into this article or section. ... Garrett Hardin Garrett James Hardin (April 21, 1915 – September 14, 2003) was a controversial ecologist from Dallas, Texas who was most known for his 1968 paper, The Tragedy of the commons. ... Science is the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). ... Psychology is an academic or applied discipline involving the scientific study of mental processes such as perception, cognition, emotion, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. ... Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 _ August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist and author. ... In operant conditioning, reinforcement is any change in an organisms surroundings that: occurs regularly when the organism behaves in a given way (that is, is contingent on a specific response), is contiguous with the behaviour (associated in time and space), and is associated with an increase in the probability...

The application of behavioral psychology terms to behaviors in the tragedy of the commons led to the realization that the same short-term/long-term cause-effect relationship also applied to other human traps in addition to the exploitation of commonly held resources. Platt, et al. also introduced the terms "social fence" and "individual trap." Social Fence refers to a short-term avoidance behavior by individuals that leads to a long-term loss to the entire group. The example presented of a social fence is the anecdote of a mattress that falls from a vehicle on a two lane highway. Motorists tend to back up in a traffic jam behind the mattress, waiting for a break in the on-coming traffic to pass around the mattress. Each individual motorist avoided the opportunity to exit their stopped car and pull the mattress to the side of the road. The long-term consequence of this avoidance behavior was that all the motorists arrived at their destinations later than they would have had an individual removed the mattress barrier.

An individual trap is similar to a social trap except that it involves the behavior of only a single person rather than a group of people. The basic concept is that an individual's behavior for short-term reinforcers leads to a long-term loss for the individual. Examples of individual traps are tobacco smoking leading to lung cancer or alcohol ingestion leading to cirrhosis of the liver. The cigarette is the most common method of smoking tobacco. ... Lung cancer is the malignant transformation and expansion of lung tissue, and is the most lethal of all cancers worldwide, responsible for 1. ... is a awesome drink  !!!!!!!!!! Functional group of an alcohol molecule. ... Cirrhosis is a consequence of chronic liver disease characterized by replacement of liver tissue by fibrotic scar tissue as well as regenerative nodules, leading to progressive loss of liver function. ...

First empirical test and the use of superimposed schedules of reinforcement

The first empirical test of the concept of social traps was by Brechner (1974, 1977) at Arizona State University, who operationalized the concepts underlying Platt, et al.'s theoretical analysis. By creating a laboratory game, Brechner had groups of college students playing a game where they could accumulate points by pressing buttons for the individual short-term positive rewards of experimental credit in their introductory psychology classes. Players could see a lighted display that indicated the total quantity of points available at any given time in the experiment. Players were told that if they completely drained the pool of points, the game was over and they could not accumulate more points. By responding for points at a moderate rate all the players in the group could accumulate enough points to fulfill their entire semester's experimental requirements. But if one or more players took points for themselves at too fast a rate, the pool would be drained of points and none of the players would achieve the maximum potential experimental credit. Arizona State University (ASU) is a public institution of higher education and research with campuses located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. ...

In building the laboratory analogy of social traps, Brechner introduced the concept of "superimposed schedules of reinforcement." Skinner and Ferster (1957) had demonstrated that reinforcers could be delivered on schedules (schedule of reinforcement), and further that organisms behaved differently under different schedules. Rather than a reinforcer, such as food or water, being delivered every time as a consequence of some behavior, a reinforcer could be delivered after more than one instance of the behavior. For example, a pigeon may be required to peck a button switch five times before food is made available to the pigeon. This is called a "ratio schedule." Also, a reinforcer could be delivered after an interval of time passed following a target behavior. An example is a rat that is given a food pellet one minute after the rat pressed a lever. This is called an "interval schedule." In addition, ratio schedules can deliver reinforcement following fixed or variable number of behaviors by the individual organism. Likewise, interval schedules can deliver reinforcement following fixed or variable intervals of time following a single response by the organism. Individual behaviors tend to generate response rates that differ based upon how the reinforcement schedule is created. Much subsequent research in many labs examined the effects on behaviors of scheduling reinforcers. This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... In operant conditioning, reinforcement is any change in an organisms surroundings that: occurs regularly when the organism behaves in a given way (that is, is contingent on a specific response), is contiguous with the behaviour (associated in time and space), and is associated with an increase in the probability... Pigeon redirects here. ... Species 50 species; see text *Several subfamilies of Muroids include animals called rats. ...

When an organism is offered the opportunity to choose between or among two or more simple schedules of reinforcement at the same time, the reinforcement structures are called "concurrent schedules of reinforcement." In creating the laboratory analogy of social traps, Brechner created a situation where simple reinforcement schedules were superimposed upon each other. In other words, a single response or group of responses by an organism led to multiple consequences. Concurrent schedules of reinforcement can be thought of as "or" schedules, and superimposed schedules of reinforcement can be thought of as "and" schedules. In operant conditioning, concurrent schedules of reinforcement are schedules of reinforcement that are simultaneously available to an animal subject or human participant, so that the subject or participant can respond on either schedule. ...

To simulate social traps a short-term positive reward is superimposed upon a long-term negative consequence. In the specific experiment, the short-term positive reinforcer was earning points that applied to class credits. The long-term negative consequence was that each point earned by a player also drained the pool of available points. Responding too rapidly for short-term gains led to the long-term loss of draining the resource pool. What makes the traps social is that any individual can respond in a way that the long-term consequence also comes to bear on the other individuals in the environment.

Superimposed schedules of reinforcement have many real-world applications in addition to generating social traps (Brechner and Linder, 1981; Brechner, 1987). Many different human individual and social situations can be created by superimposing simple reinforcement schedules. For example a human being could have simultaneous tobacco and alcohol addictions. Even more complex situations can be created or simulated by superimposing two or more concurrent schedules. For example, a high school senior could have a choice between going to Stanford University or UCLA, and at the same time have the choice of going into the Army or the Air Force, and simultaneously the choice of taking a job with an internet company or a job with a software company. That would be a reinforcement structure of three superimposed concurrent schedules of reinforcement.

Subsequent experimentation

Subsequent empirical studies by other researchers explored aspects of social traps other than the underlying reinforcement structure. Studies tended to concentrate on manipulating social and cognitive variables. Cass and Edney (1978) created a simpler game using a bowl of nuts to simulate a commonly held resource. The Nuts Game as they called it had some distinct advantages over Brechner's electronically wired laboratory simulation. The Nuts Game could be transported easily to any environment in or out of the laboratory. It was simple and required no electronics. The reinforcers used were primary food rewards rather than the secondary conditioned reinforcers of class credit used in the earlier study.

From John Platt et al's initial concept, social trap research has spread to laboratories all over the world and has expanded into the fields of Sociology and Economics. Summaries of the many other diverse studies of social traps can be found in Messick and McCLelland (1983) and Rothstein (2005).

See also

• prisoner's dilemma
• trigger strategy
• War of attrition (game)
• Zero-sum

Will the two prisoners cooperate to minimize total loss of liberty or will one of them, trusting the other to cooperate, betray him so as to go free? In game theory, the prisoners dilemma is a type of non-zero-sum game in which two players can cooperate with... A trigger strategy is a class of strategies employed in the repeated prisoners dilemma. ... In game theory the War of attrition is a model of aggression in which two contestants compete for a resource of value V by persisting while accumulating costs at a constant rate c. ... Zero-sum describes a situation in which a participants gain (or loss) is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the other participant(s). ...

References

Brechner. K. C. (1974) An experimental analysis of social traps. Ph.D. Dissertation, Arizona State University.

Brechner, K. C. (1977). An experimental analysis of social traps. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 552-564.

Brechner, K.C. (1987) Social Traps, Individual Traps, and Theory in Social Psychology. Pasadena, CA: Time River Laboratory, Bulletin No. 870001.

Brechner, K.C. and Linder, D.E. (1981), A social trap analysis of energy distribution systems, in Advances in Environmental Psychology, Vol. 3, A. Baum & Singer, JE, eds. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates.

Cass, R., & Edney, J. J. (1978) The commons dilemma: A simulation testing the effects of resource visibility and territorial division. Human Ecology, 6, 371—386.

Cross, J.G. and M.J. Guyer (1980) Social Traps. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; ISBN 0-472-06315-4.

Edney, J.J. and C. S. Harper (1978) The effects of information in a resource management problem: A social trap analog. Human Ecology,6 (4), 387-395.

Hardin, G. (1968) The Tragedy of the Commons, Science, 162, 1243-1248. Hardin is the name of several places in the United States of America: Hardin, Illinois Hardin, Kentucky Hardin, Missouri Hardin, Montana Hardin, Texas Hardin County, Illinois Hardin County, Iowa Hardin County, Kentucky Hardin County, Ohio Hardin County, Tennessee Hardin County, Texas This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid...

Keller, F. S. and W. N. Schoenfeld (1950) Principles of Psychology, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Messick, D.M and C.L. McClelland (1983) Social Traps and Temporal Traps, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 9, No. 1, 105-110 (1983)

Platt, J. (1973) Social Traps, American Psychologist, 28, 641-65.

Rothstein, B. (2005) Social Traps and the Problem of Trust, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN-13: 9780521612821 | ISBN-10: 0521612829)

Skinner, B.F. (1938) The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis, ISBN 1-58390-007-1, ISBN 0-87411-487-X. This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Skinner, B.F. (1948) Walden Two. ISBN 0-02-411510-X. This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Skinner, B.F. (1953) Science and Human Behavior, ISBN 0-02-929040-6. This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Skinner, B.F. with C. B. Ferster, (1957) Schedules of Reinforcement, ISBN 0-13-792309-0. This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Skinner, B.F. (1957) Verbal Behavior, ISBN 1-58390-021-7. This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...