bringing out the civility in us all

In the wake of Rep. Giffords' tragic shooting, the political and punditry establishment may disagree on whether gun laws should be revised or if more unhinged Americans should be corralled before they turn violent, but everyone has bought the bipartisan line that American politics is due for a strong dose of civility.

But aside from a few legislators agreeing to buddy up with members from the opposite party during tonight's SOTU address, no one's really saying how - or if - we can turn the civility tide.

I don't have answers, but a study I bumped into yesterday gives me hope that it doesn't have to be hard to do.

In 1993, Lee Ross and Samuels brought together a group of undergrads to play the "prisoner's dilemma" game. A classic in ethics and game theory courses, the prisoner's dilemma sets up the following situation: You and a co-conspirator have just been arrested for murder. Now separated into different interrogation rooms at the local precinct, you're given a choice. You can either agree to cooperate with police and, in doing so, throw your friend under the bus - or you can stick to your story that the two of you are innocent. If you both stay silent, you'll probably get 3 years in prison. If, however, you rat out your partner, you'll walk away and he'll get 20 years. Your friend can, of course, also rat you out, in which case you're both screwed.

The researchers were looking at two things. First, they wondered if you could guess from a student's character how they'd play the game, and so they asked the students' advisors whether the each student was more likely to be a "cooperator" - that is, stay silent and so get the fewest years of combined prison time (6 years) - or a "defector" who'd fink out on their partner. Second, Ross and Samuels were curious if they'd get different results if they made one simple change in setting up the game; with half the students they introduced the study as the "Community Game" while the other half thought they were playing the "Wall Street Game."

The results were strikingly clear. There was virtually no difference between the students deemed more likely to be defectors and those thought to be natural cooperators (if anything the former groups were better cooperators). But regardless of their previous reputation, when playing the "Wall Street Game" 33% of students cooperated, while out of those students in the "Community Game" 66% cooperated. Remember, the "games" were identical; the only difference was the name.

Stark as those results are, they line up with tons of other research which suggests that few of us (if any) are always cooperative altruists; most of us will decide to be team-players only if we think others are chipping in. We take the temperature of the room and act accordingly. So if we're in a "community" game we're more likely to act like good community members. But tell us we're on Wall Street, and the shark in us tends to come out. (Unfortunately, that research also tells us that about 25% of us will "free-ride" on the community no matter how much the rest are pitching in.)

It may be that (for all us non-free-riders) we're waiting for the signs that it's safe to play nice. But Ross and Samuels' results could be explained by an even more pervasive influence: social proof. That is, when we're uncertain how to behave, we tend to follow everybody else's lead. So if most people in the village are helping to rebuild Farmer John's barn, we'll grab our tool belt and join up. But if all the guys on the trading floor are competing for the biggest bonus, no one's going to get leg up.

Whether people are choosing to play nice as a rational strategy or just because they're going with the flow, the prognosis is good: if you set the tone of "cooperation" or "civility", you'll get cooperation and civility.