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This study compares two models of motivation for cooperative behavior in groups. Those models are the resource-based social exchange model and the status-based social identity model. A comparison of the two models suggests that both are important in understanding cooperation in groups. However, issues of identity are relatively more important antecedents of cooperation, especially in the case of discretionary cooperative behavior. Further, identity also has a strong influence on attitudes and values, which themselves have been linked to discretionary behavior. Hence, identity issues dominate people's motivation to voluntarily cooperate with the groups to which they belong.

In the past few decades, numerous experiments have shown that humans do not always behave so as to maximize their material payoff. Cooperative behavior when noncooperation is a dominant strategy (with respect to the material payoffs) is particularly puzzling. Here we propose a novel approach to explain cooperation, assuming what Halpern and Pass call translucent players. Typically, players are assumed to be opaque, in the sense that a deviation by one player in a normal-form game does not affect the strategies used by other players. However, a player may believe that if he switches from one strategy to another, the fact that he chooses to switch may be visible to the other players. For example, if he chooses to defect in Prisoner's Dilemma, the other player may sense his guilt. We show that by assuming translucent players, we can recover many of the regularities observed in human behavior in well-studied games such as Prisoner's Dilemma, Traveler's Dilemma, Bertrand Competition, and the Public Goods game. The approach can also be extended to take into account a player's concerns that his social group (or God) may observe his actions. This extension helps explain prosocial behavior in situations in which previous models of social behavior fail to make correct predictions (e.g. conflict situations and situations where there is a trade-off between equity and efficiency).

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of wide-area search munitions in various scenarios using different cooperative behavior algorithms. The general scenario involves multiple autonomous munitions searching for an unknown number of targets of different priority in unknown locations. Three cooperative behavior algorithms are used in each scenario: no cooperation, cooperative attack only, and cooperative classification and attack. In the cooperative cases, the munitions allocate tasks on-line as a group, using linear programming techniques to determine the optimum allocation. Each munition provides inputs to the task allocation routine in the form of probabilities of successfully being able to complete the various tasks. These probabilities of success are based on statistical Poisson field theory. Weighting parameters are applied to the probabilities of success so that optimum settings can be determined via Response Surface Methodology. Results are compared within and across the various scenarios. Initial results did not reflect expected behavior (due to poor choice of responses to optimize). Experiments were modified and more desirable results obtained. In general, cooperative engagement alone attacks and kills fewer targets than no cooperation. Cooperative classification however, kills fewer targets at low false target attack rates (< 0.005/sq km), but outperforms the other algorithms as the false target attack rate increases. This is due primarily to the fact that cooperative classification significantly reduces and stabilizes the effective false target attack rate.

Scholars suggest that coproduction may exacerbate inequity in the delivery of services because citizens with high need may have fewer resources to commit to the process. We explore whether differences between administrators and citizens might also contribute to such inequities. We use Social Identity Theory to develop the expectation that administrators may have a greater affinity for and are more willing to work with in-group members in the coproduction of public services. Evidence from a survey experiment with approximately 200 public administrators demonstrates that racial congruence increases the likelihood of cooperative behavior indirectly through its impact on sympathy for a partner. The results do not suggest a direct impact for shared identity on cooperative behavior.