Social Values and Social Structure

Abstract

The exchanges that individualist, prosocial, and competitive actors will make and the kind of negotiations they will carry out in dyads and power structures are predicted here for the first time. The predictions are generated by bridging two previously independent streams of thought, network exchange theory and social value orientations. In so doing, this article shows that formal, mathematical theory and metric predictions are not threatened by using multiple actors with contrasting utilities. Results offered here are hypothetical and provide a baseline against which empirical studies can be compared. A later paper will compare these predictions with experiments now ongoing.

Keywords:

• exchange ratio
• interaction process
• network exchange
• social value orientation

Acknowledgments

We thank the National Science Foundation for SES-0954791 to David Willer contributing to the development of ideas in this article.

Notes

¹“Narrow rationality” and Roth's “rational utility maximizers” (below) are the “individualists” of the social value orientation literature. See the definition of “individualist” in the following section.

²Also see Ledyard (1995). Similarly, relaxing the scope of a theory, if done incorrectly “weakens the theoretical argument” (Walker & Cohen, 1985, p. 299).

³Because the theory offered here covers broad scope, it is inevitably the case that some of its predictions will have been anticipated by previous work. For example, the synthesis of SVO and NET predicts that, in dyadic exchanges, the negotiations of prosocials will be shorter than those of other SVO types, which is consistent with previous experimental results by DeDreu and Van Lange (1995). The reader should not conclude from that consistency that nothing new was offered here. To the contrary, De Dreu and Van Lange's results are one place where the SVO-NET theory currently has empirical support. Certainly, it should be obvious that theoretically covering a result is not redundant of that result (see Popper, 1959, p. 313).

⁴Previous utility models of SVO, such as Wyer's (1969), parameterized actors’ level of interest in self and/or other. Admittedly, such a model would be useful in generating predictions in empirical tests. However, here we deal with ideal types, and thus feel that using utility models specified for each SVO type is appropriate here.

⁵Simpson and Macy's (2004) formulation applies when n ≥ 2. When n = 2 as it does in all exchange relations their factor reduces to the one used here.

⁶For further discussions of utility and the illegitimate use of interpersonal utility comparisons, see Willer (1999).

⁷Resistance is algebraically equivalent to the Raiffa (1953) and Kalai and Smorodinsky (1975) solutions.

⁸As van Assen (2001) pointed out, resource pools have the same payoff matrix as many, but not necessarily all exchange relations.

Note. SVO = social value orientation.

⁹SVO research by De Dreu and Van Lange (1995) on exchange found that prosocials made lower first offers and greater concessions than other types. Their results are supportive to at least some degree of what is predicted above and below.

¹⁰Note that comparing relative satisfaction is not comparing utilities: Relative satisfaction is dimensionless.

¹¹Furthermore, the relative satisfaction of paired prosocials is 100%.

Note. SVO = social value orientation; PS = prosocial; C = competitor; I = individualist.

Authorship is equal. The order of authors was determined by lot.