Heterogeneity in Social Dilemmas: The Case of Social Support

Abstract

“Heterogeneous Social Dilemmas: The Case of Social Support” studies the level of social support between heterogeneous actors. We consider heterogeneity with respect to several individual properties: the likelihood of needing support, the costs of providing support, and the benefits from receiving support. We investigate whether more support is provided by homogeneous actors than by heterogeneous actors for different kinds of heterogeneity. Social support in dyadic relations between two actors is modeled as an Iterated Support Game. We derive hypotheses on actors' supportive behavior from game-theoretic analyses and test them with data from laboratory experiments. We find, for instance, that actors who only differ in their likelihood of needing support help each other less, the more their likelihoods of needing support differ. However, if actors also differ in their costs of providing support, this might decrease as well as increase support among the actors, depending on who has the higher costs of providing support.