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Types of Social Traps

Besides defining this psychological phenomenon, Platt also distinguishes between social traps and social fences (countertraps). Social traps represent a behavior or action which prioritizes individual gains at the expense of collective gains. Social fence...[original article]... The missing hero trap is a perfect representation of a social fence. ...[original article]... Schelling!

According to Platt, social traps can be categorized into one-person traps (self-traps) and group traps. One-person traps ...[original article]...

Group traps are situations when the whole collective becomes trapped with long-term negative consequences caused by the pursuit of self-interest by many people before. Such traps represent many current environmental issues worldwide, especially climate change. Group traps can also be viewed as collective-action problems, characterized by the cumulation of individual actions into outcomes shared within the group. To solve the problem, collective cooperation is necessary.

Further, it is possible to differentiate between temporal and social traps (Messick et al., 1983). Temporal traps emphasize the time dimension represented by traps: the short-term and long-term benefits and losses, only concerning individuals. In contrast, social traps highlight the individual and collective level of traps, where the time dimension is not necessarily present.

Social dilemmas

The term social trap is generally less known than social dilemma. A few years after John Platt published his article, Robyn Dawes created the term social dilemma, which resembles the definition of a group social trap in almost all aspects. However, Dawes added two more characteristics: the pursuit of self-interest (defection) is more beneficial to an individual than contributing to the collective good (cooperation) regardless of other members' actions, but the overall most beneficial strategy (with the highest payoff) for everyone involved is always to cooperate. Dawes introduced the concept of social dilemmas to embrace both social traps and commons dilemmas, which have similar characteristics. Various game theory models proved to be valuable tools in testing and exploring the decision-making behavior when faced with a social dilemma. The most attention so far has been given to the well-known Prisoner's Dilemma game.

There are three main categories of social dilemmas: large-scale dilemmas, commons dilemmas (or resource dilemmas), and public goods dilemmas. Large-scale dilemmas represent classical group social traps, where seeking short-term personal benefits lead to negative consequences for the whole group. Commons dilemmas originated from Hardin's article arise when a scarce common resource shared within a collective becomes depleted because each member desires more than is fair. Lastly, the public goods dilemma describes a situation where an individual is faced with the dilemma of whether they should contribute to the shared public good (e.g., taxpayers contributing to national defense or maintenance of public parks) or free-ride on the contributions of others. In this case, everyone doesn't need to contribute; only a sufficient number does.

Social traps and climate change

Social traps and dilemmas represent one of the major causes of ongoing climate change, specifically due to the conflict between self-interest and collective gain (Capstick). A practical example of a social trap is when people prefer cars to public transportation - the short-term personal benefit, in this case, represents the comfort and possibly a demonstration of social status, whereas the long-term outcomes of such behavior lead to the rise in the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere and thus aggravating the harmful effects of climate change. Such defecting (non-cooperative) behavior is frequently strengthened when confronted with the feeling of social and environmental uncertainty, particularly in collective social traps, large-scale dilemmas, and commons dilemmas (Steg, Van Lange). Social uncertainty, meaning the uncertainty of others actions, and environmental uncertainty, regarding the unpredictability of the resource's availability or abundance, generally prevent cooperation within groups and often lead to taking more than a fair share (DeVries et al., 1992). However, research has shown that cooperative behavior under social and environmental uncertainty can be enhanced when the group chooses a trustworthy leader who manages the shared resource justly (Wilke, 1991).

There appear to be many strategies to escape or avoid social traps and dilemmas, which could provide valuable input for local and global climate policies. In Platt's original article, he proposed some of those - for example, imposing rewards for proenvironmental behavior (e.g., monetary rewards) and punishments for environmentally unfriendly behavior (e.g., pollution taxes)(Platt). The enforcement of pollution taxes can be very efficient, for example, in managing hazardous waste (Costanza, 1987). In terms of fulfilling climate agreements and global treaties, world governments must be aware of a definite threshold (temperature, atmospheric CO₂ concentration) that cannot be crossed (Barrett, 2012). The lack thereof might lead to uncertainty, free-riding on the contributions of other countries, and thus to the failure to comply with set agreements (Barrett, 2012). As for promoting cooperation and proenvironmental behavior among people, research shows that people need to believe their actions count and are significant (Koletsou, 2011), and they should be aware of the negative consequences of their actions (Van Vugt, 1998). Also, promoting altruism and social norms can become practical tools when attempting to escape social traps and dilemmas (Dawes, 1980). Additionally, cooperation among group members increases when group identity is strengthened, and a leader is elected to manage a common resource (Van Vugt, 1999).