Social trap

A social trap is a situation in which a group of people act to obtain short-term individual gains, which in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole.

This term groups a lot of different situations as:

• Overfishing
• Energy “brownout” and “blackout” power outages during periods of extreme temperatures
• The overgrazing of cattle on the Sahelian Desert
• The destruction of the rainforest by logging interests and agriculture

See also

Game Theory, Tragedy of the commons

Papers

• Platt, J. (1973). Social Traps. American Psychologist 28 (8): 641-651.
• Macy, M. W. (1989). Walking out of Social Traps A Stochastic Learning Model for the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Rationality and Society, 1(2), 197-219.

Books

• Cross, J. G. & Guyer, M. J. (1980). Social Traps. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.