RESOLVING SOCIAL CONFLICTS THROUGH HOSTAGE POSTING - THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The well-known Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) is often used to model situatio ns of social conflict between two or more actors. The essence of the d ilemma is that each actor has individual incentives to act according t o narrow self-interests referred to as defection, yet all actors are b etter off and receive higher payoffs for mutual cooperation. Many atte mpts have been made to study ways by which cooperation can be enhanced . This article focuses on a specific device, namely hostage posting or pledging of a bond. In the first part, a game-theoretic model is sket ched that specifies the conditions under which hostage posting will ef fectively promote cooperative behavior. In the second part, the author s describe several experiments that were designed to test the descript ive power of the theory, and at the same time they provide further ins ight into the processes underlying social conflicts. Implications rega rding social conflicts and possible applications to other domains are briefly discussed at the end.