Human cooperation in groups: variation begets variation

Berg, Pieter van den; Molleman, Lucas; Junikka, Jaakko; Puurtinen, Mikael; Weissing, Franz J.

doi:10.1038/srep16144

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 56 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In reality, humans have decent but noisy working memory ability 6 , and are typically self-aware about the potential for error during recall of past events 7 . Thus, little is known about how the dynamics of group formation itself affect individual behavior, including how memory capacity modulates decision strategies and overall levels of cooperativeness in larger group sizes 8 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forget and Forgive: A Neurocognitive Mechanism for Increased Cooperation During Group Formation

Zajkowski,

Badman,

Haruno

et al. 2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How does cooperation emerge during human group formation? The relationship between group dynamics and individual motivation to cooperate is not well understood. To examine this we performed a dynamic, network-based prisoner's dilemma experiment with 83 human subjects and observed increased cooperation levels as the group grew larger. The mechanism underlying this behavior was an interaction between three factors: (1) memory-dependent reciprocal strategy (2) increased working memory demands in larger groups and (3) temporally-stable cooperative tendency. The integration between long and short timescale factors was reflected in the activity within left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). Thus, cooperation in groups emerges from multiscale, value-based computations which link individual preferences with social dynamics, affecting group-level behavior.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forget and Forgive: A Neurocognitive Mechanism for Increased Cooperation During Group Formation

Zajkowski,

Badman,

Haruno

et al. 2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Studies of the evolution of cooperation typically document behavioral variation (e.g., [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]), including those where behavioral strategies are explicitly assessed (e.g., [16,17]). Hence, the existence of such behavioral variation may provide a general explanation for the evolution of cooperation [3][4][5][6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When and How Does Mutation-Generated Variation Promote the Evolution of Cooperation?

Spichtig

Egas

2019

Games

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mutation-generated variation in behavior is thought to promote the evolution of cooperation. Here, we study this by distinguishing two effects of mutation in evolutionary games of the finitely repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma in infinite asexual populations. First, we show how cooperation can evolve through the direct effect of mutation, i.e., the fitness impact that individuals experience from interactions with mutants before selection acts upon these mutants. Whereas this direct effect suffices to explain earlier findings, we question its generality because mutational variation usually generates the highest direct fitness impact on unconditional defectors (AllD). We identify special conditions (e.g., intermediate mutation rates) for which cooperation can be favored by an indirect effect of mutation, i.e., the fitness impact that individuals experience from interactions with descendants of mutants. Simulations confirm that AllD-dominated populations can be invaded by cooperative strategies despite the positive direct effect of mutation on AllD. Thus, here the indirect effect of mutation drives the evolution of cooperation. The higher level of cooperation, however, is not achieved by individuals triggering reciprocity (‘genuine cooperation’), but by individuals exploiting the willingness of others to cooperate (‘exploitative cooperation’). Our distinction between direct and indirect effects of mutation provides a new perspective on how mutation-generated variation alters frequency-dependent selection.

show abstract

Reputation-based cooperation: empirical evidence for behavioral strategies

Swakman

Molleman

Ule

et al. 2016

Evolution and Human Behavior

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Human cooperation in large groups can emerge when help is channeled towards individuals with a good reputation of helping others. Evolutionary models suggest that, for reputation-based cooperation to be stable, the recipient's reputation should be based not only on his past behavior (1st-order information) but also on the past behavior of the recipient's recipient (2nd-order information). Second-order information reflects the context of others' actions, and allows people to distinguish whether or not giving (or denying) help was justified. Little is known yet about how people actually condition their cooperation on 2nd-order information. With a behavioral experiment, we show that people actively seek 2nd-order information and take this into account in their own helping decisions. In an anonymous iterated helping game, donors learned if their recipients helped others in the past and could obtain 2nd-order information about these actions. Donors often requested this 2nd-order information and were especially interested to know why help was denied (i.e., defection). Justified defection was rewarded: help was generally directed towards those who defected against the selfish, and away from those who defected against helpful individuals. A detailed analysis of individual strategies reveals that many subjects based their decisions solely on 1st-order information about their recipients' past behavior. However, a substantial fraction of subjects consistently considered also the 2nd-order information about their recipients' behavior. Our results provide strong empirical support for the mechanisms that theoretically underpin reputation-based cooperation, and highlight pronounced individual variation in human cooperative strategies.

show abstract

Human cooperation in groups: variation begets variation

Cited by 8 publications

References 56 publications

Forget and Forgive: A Neurocognitive Mechanism for Increased Cooperation During Group Formation

Forget and Forgive: A Neurocognitive Mechanism for Increased Cooperation During Group Formation

When and How Does Mutation-Generated Variation Promote the Evolution of Cooperation?

Reputation-based cooperation: empirical evidence for behavioral strategies

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About