Influence of Different Types of Intergroup Relationship on Decision-making Behavior of Chinese Enterprise Employees

Abstract

In real life, individuals tend to divide people into “us” (in-group) and “them” (out-group), then give a positive social identity and evaluation to the in-group, and give out-group a negative evaluation or attitude. In other words, the intergroup relationships affect individual rational judgment. For studying the relationship between individual and group interests, in order to explore and forecast the individual decision-making behavior in intergroup relations, social psychologists brought forward the Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma Game (IPD) and Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma-Maximizing Difference Game (IPD-MD), these experimental paradigms are referenced in many fields by posterity.

On the basis of predecessors' research paradigm, the experiment adds the scheme of win-win cooperation to IPD-MD, adopts the repeated experimental design which accords with realistic state, and the study utilizes 120 Chinese enterprise employees to participate in the experiment that is named “Investment Game”, by artificially establishing four virtual intergroup situations, including conflict, neutral, cooperation and relationship change. Finally, the study draws a conclusion, which is based on the statistical analysis and self-reports.

Different types of intergroup relationship have an important influence on the decision-making behavior of chinese enterprise employees. Chinese enterprise employees in the intergroup conflict situation tend to be more aggressive and less friendly, meanwhile ingroup could reach consensus through higher efficiency. chinese enterprise employees in the intergroup cooperation situation could alleviate egocentric motivation and reach a win-win cooperation with outgroup in a faster rate. When the intergroup situation is changed from conflict to cooperation, the reactions of different  chinese enterprise employees are various.