The Impact of Social Value Orientation on Decision Making in Social Dilemmas: A Survey Exercise

This chapter introduces the basic principles of designing a self-report questionnaire to be used in a survey. It provides guidance on survey sampling issues and employs in the course exercise a quasi-experimental design in a field setting. The aim of the exercise is to examine the impact of social value orientation on decision making in a real-life social dilemma. The specific hypothesis tested is whether cooperators behave more cooperatively (and less competitively) in a social dilemma than do individualists and competitors. To this end, students develop a survey to examine reactions to a naturally occurring dilemma that they choose. They then administer the survey, along with an existing measure of social value orientation, to test this hypothesis. The exercise is appropriate for introductory level students.