The famed Scottish economist Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations and widely regarded as the father of modern capitalism, had a theory. He believed that when people use a resource they are guided by an “invisible hand” that pushes them to exploit said resource for the benefit of the community (Gruman, 2017). Another economist, William Lloyd, disagreed with this theory. He believed the problem with Smith’s logic is that many resources may appear to be infinite, but are in fact finite. This causes people to overindulge and deplete the resources with no regard to their neighbors or community.
His example, which I can recall being taught in one of my political science classes, is the one about grazing land. Farmers know that overgrazing is bad or even disastrous for the environment. The problem arises when people stop seeing themselves as a community and only look to their own needs. They think “Sure, this isn’t great for the land but how bad can it be if one farmer overdoes it a bit?”. Instead of using the apparent surplus to help his fellow man, he is actually incentivized to push his grazing to the absolute limits.
This is an example of a resource dilemma, but it is also a concept that can be applied to other behaviors. For example, someone might say “How much harm can throwing this one soda can out of my car window cause the environment”? If you take 50,000 people in a large city all thinking that same thing, you get a filthy city. In the case of littering, ad campaigns have successfully shifted social norms to make littering taboo. The psychology of these behaviors has been widely explored.
California State University social psychologist Wesley Schultz has made a career out of observing these sorts of behaviors. On littering, he says “The presence of existing litter was strongly predictive of littering behavior. So if you’re in a place that’s already highly littered, you’re much more likely to litter than if you’re in a place that’s clean or free of litter” (Blouin, 2016, p. 1). This is largely in line with the example of the farmer’s grazing land. Farmers think that if others are doing it why shouldn’t they reap the benefits as well?
These ideas are critical to the understanding of how we as human beings living in a global society can do more to make the best of what limited resources we have. The Earth may appear to be an endless fountain of resources, but we are already beginning to see the strain. Extreme weather, animal extinction, climate change, water shortages you name it. These things can be alleviated, if not solved, if we strive to better understand the psychology of people.
References
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE.
Blouin, L. (2016, February 8). The psychology of littering. The Allegheny Front. https://www.alleghenyfront.org/the-psychology-of-littering/
Hi!
Great blog post! I enjoyed reading your perspective on the Tragedy of the Commons and think you write very well. You did an excellent job balancing your own ideas with outside information as well. I thought one particularly interesting thing was the finding by Schultz that the evidence of litter was predictive of the behavior of littering. I think that is very telling of the social psychology influence in this discussion and overall just an intriguing finding. This idea of acting in self-interest to the determinant of others and the resource is often easier and more rewarding in the short run which explains some of the examples you provided (Gruman et al., 2016). Conversely, behaving in the public’s best interest is often more expensive, difficult, time-consuming, and less immediately rewarding (Gruman et al., 2016). If you have not already done so, I would look into the “microworlds” that social scientists use to conduct experiments on resource dilemmas (Gruman et al., 2016). Because it is not feasible to perform resource dilemmas with real resources, researchers use these microworlds which are dynamic computer-based virtual environments in labs that are supposed to simulate real-world conditions (Gruman et al., 2016). You might even think that participants do not respond to these simulations as they would in their everyday lives but evidence shows that well-designed microworlds can elicit strong emotions and cause participants to take it as seriously as they would a full-scale resource (Gruman et al., 2016). It really is fascinating the abilities these simulations give researchers and I would recommend checking them out more if you are interested!
Nice work!
-Colton
References
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.
Hello!
You made a great point about how the tragedy of the commons relates to modern issues, like overgrazing & littering. This perfectly aligns with the idea that when individuals prioritize their short-term self-interest, it can lead to long-term damage for the whole community. Gruman et al. (2016) discuss how social norms & behavioral interventions, such as anti-littering campaigns, have shown massive success in changing attitudes toward more sustainable practices. By changing the perception of what is acceptable, it becomes way easier for people to see the collective impact, whether it’s taking care of shared land or reducing waste in public spaces.
Thank you for sharing!
RMT
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE.