Consensus Building: Process Design Toward Finding a Shared Recognition of Common Goal Beyond Conflicts

Abstract This chapter endeavors to find out the roads to build a consensus from the perspective of social dilemmas. Consensus does not mean making any one party happy and is not merely half measures. Rather, it refers to discovering values that anyone can admit and can share the goals. Even if it appears controversial and conflictive, a consensus is a crystal of the process that everyone attends the attempt to seek and share a common goal. First, the literature on social dilemmas, particularly applying game experiments in social psychology, is introduced. Guiding theories, such as goal expectation theory emphasizing expectation to mutual cooperation, are presented. In the second part, game-simulation is introduced as a tool to understand the consensus process. Three studies using game-simulation are presented, where different types of players are inevitably in conflict with one another due to their different interests. Overall, the findings using game-simulation suggest that a social dilemma is not a target to be resolved but a way of framing to realize the importance of mutual cooperation. The real world is so complicated that social dilemma is one of the aspects or that it is uncertain whether society has a social dilemma structure. Under the complex situation, once individuals recognize an issue as a social dilemma, they begin to seek a common goal desirable for the entire society. Thereby, if shared recognition is established, consensus can be built resolving the conflicts beyond different interests. Attention should be paid to the process of comprehending the common goal.