To Be a Sheep or to Be a Shepherd? The Influence of Political and Religious Identity and In-group Behaviors on Environmental Dilemma Decisions and Post-Decision Emotions

Abstract

The tragedy of the commons is a scenario where individuals choose how much of a finite resource they will use for their own benefit. It has been widely assumed that in these situations humans act selfishly with their best interests in mind. Management of public resources (commons dilemmas) has implications for environmental wellbeing, economic prosperity, and social justice. Research has shown that helping behavior is more likely to occur when identity, emotions, and personal and social expectations are salient. Participants were presented with a hypothetical commons dilemma asking how many sheep they would own as part of a communal pasture. The two present studies test religious and political identity salience and in-group behavior information against differences in repeated commons’ dilemma choices and post-decision emotions. Participants were assigned to three groups where information was provided before their second decision stating that their in-group acted similarly to their first decision (congruent), dissimilarly (incongruent), or no in-group behavior was provided (control). As expected, in both studies, incongruent participants experienced significant differences between decisions in the direction of the in-group behavior. However, across both studies, participants that chose a low eco-friendly option in the first decision experienced significant decreases in their second decision regardless of treatment group. To our surprise, negative emotion scores decreased significantly across studies and groups. In the religious study, social identity was a predictor of commons’ differences regardless of first choice and personal identity was a predictor of commons’ differences for participants who chose low eco-friendly first choices. These findings suggest that when identity is salient, originally non eco-conscious behavior is more susceptible to change than originally eco-conscious behavior and that negative emotions typically decrease between repeated measures regardless of several variables. Implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.