Year: 1999
Type: report
Abstract: When individuals seek one another out to combine their resources and produce collective benefits not available by acting alone, they form a self-organized group.Drawing on club theory from economics, theories of motivation and social integration from psychology, and theories of coalition formation and bargaining from political science and psychology, we presume that multiple such groups can form from a pool of potential members, and that members have control over their membership choices subject to the constraints posed by others' preferences and choices.We presume that the benefits produced by a group will depend on the composition of members, and that members may differ both in the resources they bring to the group and the benefits they hope to obtain.Based on these presumptions, the relevant elements of self-organized group formation are identified as follows: At the individual level, resources and preferences or needs are relevant.At the interpersonal level, individuals gather information about the resources and preferences of others and negotiate whether or not to form or join groups.At the group level, some production function turns resources into group goods.The composition of member resources will affect what the group produces, and the composition of member preferences and relative member power will affect how goods are divided.Member satisfaction with outcomes and the perceived costs and benefits of attempting to join or form an alternative group should affect the stability of membership in newly formed groups.The social poker paradigm translates these elements into a card game that allows for the manipulation of individual resources, interpersonal information, relative power among members, the minimize effective size of groups, and other variables of potential interest.Individual resources are represented by playing cards, which individuals can combine by forming a group and pooling their cards to form card hands that earn the group money.
Authors: Holly Arrow, Ruth E. Bennett, Scott Crosson, John Orbell
Institution: University of Oregon
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: National Science Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W2194453927