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INTRODUCTION
The concept of mixed-motive conflict was first introduced by economist Thomas Schelling (1960) to refer to a situation in which two or more parties are faced with a conflict between the motives to cooperate and to compete with each other. Two-person bargaining is a classic example of a mixed-motive relationship in which the bargainers must make concessions to reach a compromise agreement, but at the same time, they must compete to achieve a good bargain. Although mixed-motive interactions are involved in several research areas, this review covers only bargaining and social dilemmas [i.e. situations in which payoffs to the participants (rewards and costs) are specified, and it is assumed that all parties are motivated to maximize their payoffs]. Excluded are studies of social loafing, which has been interpreted as a special case of a social dilemma (Kerr & Bruun 1983), as well as group decision making and various forms of bargaining involving nontangible rewards and motives (e.g. face-saving, ideological issues, fear, guilt) involved in marital conflict or political-international conflict.
What remains are two basic types of mixed-motive situations: bargaining and social dilemmas. These two classes of situations (in game theory) are special cases of cooperative and noncooperative games, respectively. In a cooperative game, side-payments are possible and are enforced by an external agent, whereas in a noncooperative game, side-payments are not possible, and payoffs are based on the joint choices of two or more players. These two types of situations may be further subdivided into two-person vs N-person (N > 2) cases, resulting in a 2 x 2 classification scheme. In the two-person case we have dyadic bargaining and the classic prisoner's dilemma and their variants (e.g. the game of Chicken). In the N-person case we have research on coalition formation and N-person social dilemmas (e.g. public goods and resource dilemmas).
Many social scientists are interested in mixed-motive interaction, and an enormous number of experiments have been conducted by investigators in other disciplines. Thus, a review of all of these studies would be an impossible task. Fortunately, there are several excellent reviews of the literature in other disciplines. Because Carnevale & Pruitt (1992) have recently reviewed psychological research on bargaining, our discussion of bargaining focuses on coalition research as well as the nonpsychological literature,...