Sixteen common misconceptions about the evolution of cooperation in humans

Tit for Tat in the Dear Enemy Relationship Between Territorial Females of a Cichlid Fish

“…However, reciprocal altruism has been documented in some social vertebrate species, for example, olive baboons (Packer, 1977), vampire bats (Wilkinson, 1984;Carter and Wilkinson, 2013), and sticklebacks (Ward et al, 2002), and thus it is argued that the present claim is merely a lack of examples, and we cannot conclude this behavior is rare (Taborsky, 2013;Carter, 2014). The possibility that the dear enemy relationship, often regarded as being beneficial for both dear neighbors, is a kind of reciprocal altruism based on TFT strategy, would mean that reciprocal altruism is actually a rather common phenomenon in territorial vertebrates, with many strong examples that argue against the conventional idea that observation of reciprocity is largely restricted to humans and great apes (e.g., Clutton-Brock, 2009;West et al, 2011). Since the TFT strategy was first proposed by Trivers (1971), there have been many studies of dear enemy relationships, but it remains uncertain whether reciprocal altruism actually operates through the dear enemy effect, because it is difficult to confirm that the dear enemy phenomenon is based on TFT, and restraint incurs a cost (Koenig, 1988;Wilkinson, 1988).…”

“…As such, we conclude that the dear enemy phenomenon in female N. pulcher is based on TFT strategy, which is applicable to songbirds. There are many examples of TFT behavioral interactions in humans, and recently, it has been thought that reciprocal altruism largely dependent on a conditional strategy like TFT would be rare in vertebrates aside from humans (e.g., CluttonBrock, 2009;West et al, 2011). However, reciprocal altruism has been documented in some social vertebrate species, for example, olive baboons (Packer, 1977), vampire bats (Wilkinson, 1984;Carter and Wilkinson, 2013), and sticklebacks (Ward et al, 2002), and thus it is argued that the present claim is merely a lack of examples, and we cannot conclude this behavior is rare (Taborsky, 2013;Carter, 2014).…”

“Synergistic selection”: A Darwinian frame for the evolution of complexity

“…Thus, Sachs et al (2004), claim that "Cooperation by definition involves an interaction between individuals that benefits the recipient but not necessarily the donor." See also Lehmann and Keller (2006), West et al (2007aWest et al ( , 2007bWest et al ( , 2011. We disagree with this definition.…”

How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies

“…[32 -34]), institutional rules in these situations create an economic game form in which monitoring and sanctioning are not altruistic (sensu evolutionary biology [35]). Rather, field studies have demonstrated that successful institutional rules create conditions that provide direct benefits (sensu evolutionary biology [35]) to individuals that actively monitor and enforce them [13,14,16,27,36]. As such, in contrast to altruistic punishment [33,37], they do not require high genetic or cultural relatedness between group members.…”