Anger and Retribution After Collective Overuse: The Role of Blaming and Environmental Uncertainty in Social Dilemmas

This article investigates how group members respond to one another when collective overuse occurs. The authors argue that interpersonal reactions after overuse in a common-resource dilemma are largely determined by the environmental characteristics of the social dilemma. More specifically, under environmental certainty they expect people to show more anger to group members than under uncertainty (Study 1). Additionally, they expect stronger retributive reactions to high harvesters than to moderate harvesters, and they expect this difference to be larger under certainty than under uncertainty (Study 2 and 3). Moreover, they predict that these effects are mediated by blaming. The results of three experiments corroborate these predictions.