Autocontrole Ético sob Efeitos Cumulativos de Naturezas Diferentes no Jogo Dilema dos Comuns

Abstract

Ethical self-control is the behavior controlled by delayed consequences that benefits the group, emmited when concur with less delayed consequences of greater magnitude. The recurrence of multiple independent operant contingencies (OC), with the same consequences, form cumulative effect (CE) and constitutes a macrocontingency. The scarcity of natural resources is a contemporary problem that involves ethical self-control in a macrocontingency. Whereas the resources nature it is one of the relevant variables in the common-pool resources research area, we manipulated the CE nature (school items for donation and tokens exchangeable for money) to test its effect on the frequency of ethical self-control responses. For microcultures with 3 participantes each choose numbered rows in a 8x8 colored matrix. The participants choices produced tokens exchangeable for money for each participant: the even row choices produced three tokens, and the odd row choices producedes one token. In addition to the individual consequences, the choices affected a common-pool from which the tokens were deducted, with a readjustment at each cycle. In the baseline there was only OC; in the Condition A the individual responses produced also a cumulative effect consisting of tokens; in the Conditionna B, the cumulative effect consisted of items; and in the Condition C was tokens and items. The results indicate that the CE nature does not modify individual responses in the use of common-pool resources, or that other contingencies are required.