XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

JS-49

Reciprocity and Distributive Justice

RC42 Social Psychology (host committee)
RC45 Rational Choice

Language: English

Although the study of cooperation has a longstanding tradition in sociology, questions about how individual motivations and institutional arrangements foster cooperation are still open. To this regard, several models based on individual preferences try to explain cooperation by looking at individual’s motivations. In this vein, both reciprocity and fairness concerns are considered to facilitate cooperation at different levels. First, individuals might be willing to cooperate when they expect others to reciprocate their behavior. Second, distributive justice considerations are expected to play a role in cooperation decisions as there is strong evidence that individuals care about the distribution of outcomes in social interactions. At the individual level, the literature has focused mostly on the emergence of cooperation in experimental settings and face-to-face interactions, while research at the macro level has focused mainly on how cooperation takes place within societal institutions (i.e. why do welfare state institutions emerge and why do people support redistributive policies, why do people respect the law, why do people pay taxes). This session accepts theoretical, empirical and experimental contributions to the study the problem of cooperation focusing on the role of reciprocity and distributive justice in individual, groups and societies at large, being welcomed research related to topics suc as social trust, altruism, pro-social behavior, social cohesion, justice beliefs and distributive preferences.