This lesson is about reflecting on the causes and consequences of human behaviors in situations of social interactions, such as a group sharing a common resource, based on images, analogies, and everyday scenarios. Students reflect on their initial ideas about the factors that can motivate people to behave in a way that benefits themselves but harms the whole group (social dilemmas). Students are introduced to the payoff matrix as a helpful tool to represent motivations and outcomes of behaviors in social interactions and to identify social dilemmas.

The content also enriches the understanding of the concept of sustainability by linking it to everyday situations and various scenarios of social interactions, in which individuals need to cooperate to achieve (or sustain) outcomes that are best for everyone.

Students are encouraged to think of ways to solve social dilemmas, i.e. to think of measures that would increase the motivation of people to behave in a way that benefits everyone.

Context Considerations: You can introduce other examples of possible social interactions and social dilemmas that relate more to the everyday experience of your students. For example, situations in the school/classroom/cafeteria, in your home town etc.