Decomposability and the social comparison trap

Abstract

We propose a unified and tractable model for social comparison preferences that nests competitive motives and imperfect inequality aversion as special cases. We identify a key property called decomposability and show that players are strategically independent in decomposable games under social comparison preferences, yielding a generically unique solution in every decomposable game. The class of decomposable games is broad, including every 2 × 2 symmetric game as well as multi-player, multi-strategy games such as the minimum effort game, public goods game, and tragedy of the commons. Using this characterization, we show that social comparison often results in undesirable outcomes, sometimes worse than any outcome that would arise if all players were material payoff maximizers.