Experiments show: a strong party is often excluded from coalitions
People set certain goals but often are not able to achieve them on their own. They form coalitions in which they combine their input. A striking phenomenon is that potentially strong partners with a lot of input, of which you would think their chances of being allowed to participate in the coalition are high, often do not end up in a coalition. This is called the Strength-is-Weakness effect. Joeri Wissink has tested this effect through experiments in his PhD thesis 'Strength-Is-Weakness Revisited: On whether, why, and when having many resources leads to exclusion from coalitions', which he will defend at Tilburg University on February 5th, 2021. It turns out that the ‘weak’ exclude the ‘strong’ because of their ‘greed’.
Although this effect was already described in 1956, there are still many uncertainties about the (psychological) mechanisms that underlie this effect. Wissink wanted to know three things about this Strength-is-Weakness effect: does it still exist (replication), why and under which circumstances?
Successful replication
Wissink elaborates on this in his dissertation with a number of experiments in which participants negotiate in an attempt to become part of a coalition and distribute a sum of money within this coalition. The participants differ in how much they contribute, but not in their ability to form coalitions. In order to conduct a large-scale replication with large samples online, Wissink developed an application, the Online Coalition Game. Previous research findings, and consequently the Strength-is-Weakness effect, could be confirmed.
Greed leads to exclusion
Why individuals with a lot of input often do not end up in a coalition seems to be due to the inequality of the bids. Strong parties often want more out of the pot, which makes them less attractive for weaker parties. Moreover, the weak do expect this course of action from the strong, resulting in the fact that the strong are often not even approached. It appears that strong parties do not place their low bids because they think they are acting ‘fair’ but because they simply want to make more money.
A second set of experiments shows that this ‘greed’ leads to exclusion.
The Strength-is-Weakness effect also appears to apply in situations where the strong partner has fairly earned his contribution, instead of a contribution through random allocation (as in the replication experiment).
Contact
Joeri Wissink will defend his thesis entitled Strength is Weakness Revisited: On whether, why, and when having many resources leads to exclusion from coalitions on Friday 5 February 2021 at Tilburg University (auditorium, 1.30 pm). Supervisor: Prof. Ilja van Beest (Social Psychology). Co-supervisors: dr. Tila Pronk (Social Psychology, TSB) and dr. Niels van de Ven (Marketing, Tilburg School of Economics and Management).
For further information and a digital version of the dissertation, please contact Joeri: j.wissink@tilburguniversity.edu.
For further explanation of this phenomenon, see also Prof. Ilja van Beest at the University of the Netherlands (in Dutch)