© John Haslam

Freshman Seminar: Social Dilemmas from Overpopulation to Global Warming

Everywhere we find circumstances where individual short-term self interest and social goals conflict. Everyone in India would be better off if everyone had fewer children, but each individual has an incentive to have more. We would all be better off if everyone would take public transportation, but every individual has an incentive to drive.

These social dilemmas represent a large number of social problems in almost every culture, and they have been subjective to extensive theoretical and laboratory investigation. Much of this study has focused on how to “solve” these problems, that is how to elicit cooperative from people in these dilemmas. This course will focus on both of these studies and will attempt to apply them to actual human problems.

• Syllabus