Does Allowing Private Communication Lead to Less Prosocial Collective Choice?

• In Event: Experiments in Lab-Style Games

Abstract

We investigate the relationship between the publicness of communication over policy issues and support for prosocial proposals. A recent body of experimental evidence suggests that if discussions are held in public, individuals propose and vote for prosocial alternatives, but if discussions are held in private, individuals are more likely to use private discussions to form minimal winning coalitions and to try to implement alternatives that benefit the coalition at the expense of the excluded parties. This evidence, however, generally occurs in bargaining settings, in which making a rejected proposal is highly costly. In this setting, it is unclear whether keeping all communication public genuinely increases support for prosocial alternatives, or whether private communication reduces the complexity and risk associated with trying to form a minimal winning coalition. Expressed loosely, we do not know whether public communication causes individuals to learn to be prosocial, or whether private communication facilitates learning to form minimal winning coalitions.
To address this question, we design a laboratory experiment with less pressure to form an immediately acceptable proposal. All participants submit proposed allocations simultaneously, discuss the proposals, and then vote by simple majority rule, with no penalty for submitting a rejected proposal. The possible proposed allocations include contributions to a public good, and are designed so that the most socially efficient allocation is also egalitarian, assuring that there are not conflicting views over what makes a proposal prosocial.
We manipulate whether participants can send private messages before public discussions start. We find that restricting discussion to public communication does not increase the support for prosocial allocations over the treatment in which participants can first engage in private communication. Instead, we find that in both treatments, there is a general trend away from prosocial proposals toward forming minimal winning coalitions. This trend starts sooner with private communication, but eventually occurs with only public communication.
Our results cast doubt on the belief that holding discussions in public makes voters more prosocial. Instead, the driving force appears to be learning to propose tyranny of the majority. This learning happens somewhat faster with private communication, but happens eventually with public communication as well.

Authors

• Kira Pronin, University of Pittsburgh

• Jonathan Woon, University of Pittsburgh