Upstream reciprocity and the evolution of gratitude

Abstract

If someone is nice to you, you feel good and may be inclined to be nice to somebody else. This every day experience is borne out by experimental games: the recipients of an act of kindness are more likely to help in turn, even if the person who benefits from their generosity is somebody else. This behaviour, which has been called 'upstream reciprocity', appears to be a misdirected act of gratitude: you help somebody because somebody else has helped you. Does this make any sense from an evolutionary or a game theoretic perspective? In this paper, we show that upstream reciprocity alone does not lead to the evolution of cooperation, but it can evolve and increase the level of cooperation if it is linked to either direct or spatial reciprocity. We calculate the random walks of altruistic acts that are induced by upstream reciprocity. Our analysis shows that gratitude and other positive emotions, which increase the willingness to help others, can evolve in the competitive world of natural selection.

The Social Contagion of Antisocial Behavior

“…In the evolutionary biology and behavioral economics literature, the term "generalized reciprocity" is used to refer to helping behavior in which there is no opportunity to act on or respond to reputational information (Ben-Ner et al 2004;Nowak and Sigmund 2005;Bartlett and DeSteno 2006;Nowak and Roch 2007;Stanca 2009). In contrast, indirect reciprocity and generalized exchange involve reputational mechanisms.…”

“…Even if antisocial behaviors are highly contagious, cascades are not possible with dyadic reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, or with generalized exchange in small groups with complete networks. In contrast, generalized reciprocity in open networks allows the possibility for ripple effects that magnify the negative effects of harming others, as the mirror image of the ripple effects from helping (Nowak and Roch 2007;Fowler and Christakis 2010).…”

Cooperation among non-relatives evolves by state-dependent generalized reciprocity

“…Previous theoretical models have shown that generalized reciprocity can help the evolution of cooperation under rather specific conditions: if groups in which individuals interact are very small (two to four individuals; [20]; cf. also [21]), if the individuals' contingent decisions to cooperate and to disperse evolve independently and concurrently [22], as a by-product enhancing other mechanisms of cooperation [23], or if behavioural tactics are somewhat assorted, e.g. by population viscosity [24].…”

Breaking the Dynamics of Emotions and Fear in Conflict and Reconstruction

“…Levels of cooperation observed in this case were higher (50.7%) than for generalized reciprocity. Theoretical models have shown that the expression of direct reciprocity in a population will induce the evolution of generalized reciprocity (Nowak and Roch 2007), bringing about much higher levels of cooperation overall.…”