This research examined how self-esteem influences a person's strategy for social dilemmas where their own interests are in conflict with social interests. Using the Prisoner's Dilemma game, we designed three studies and observed robust results across the gain and loss domains, payoff amounts, and cooperation indexes. Participants who had low trait self-esteem (Study 1), participants who had state self-esteem after recall of failure (Study 2), and participants whose self-esteem was threatened (Study 3) adopted more cooperative strategies than those with high self-esteem. Choosing to cooperate helped participants with low state self-esteem improve their self-esteem, as compared to choosing to defect (Studies 2–3). By testing three underlying mechanisms, it was observed that lower levels of self-esteem induced a stronger motive to gain social interdependence, rather than social identity or social comparison (Study 3). These findings suggest a compensatory relationship between self-esteem and cooperation in social interaction. The implications for management, cooperation and collective action are discussed.

这项研究探讨了自尊如何影响一个人的自身利益与社会利益冲突的社会困境策略。通过使用囚徒困境游戏，我们设计了三项研究，并观察了损益范围，收益金额和合作指数方面的稳健结果。特质自尊低的参与者（研究1），回忆失败后有状态自尊的参与者（研究2）和自尊受到威胁的参与者（研究3）比自尊心高的参与者采取了更多的合作策略。 -尊重。与选择缺席相比，选择合作可以帮助处于低状态的自尊的参与者提高他们的自尊（研究2-3）。通过测试三种基本机制，据观察，较低的自尊感会增强获得社会相互依存的动机，而不是社会认同或社会比较（研究3）。这些发现表明，在社交互动中，自尊与合作之间存在补偿性关系。讨论了对管理，合作和集体行动的意义。