What does it mean to cooperate? Expert and lay perspectives.

Abstract

Objective: "Cooperation" is a construct for which there are a variety of definitions. This makes it a challenge to identify when cooperation has occurred and when somebody performed a behavior with cooperative intent. Complicating matters is that social and behavioral science experts tend to define cooperation in ways that differ from lay conceptions of the construct. The objective of this article is to review these definitions, contrast the expert and lay perspectives, and discuss how this difference presents problems for resolving real-world issues that require collective action. Method: Literature is selectively reviewed across psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology, environmental science, and medicine. The findings are used to analyze the global problems of climate change, contagious disease, and water conservation. Results: The expert view of cooperation is grounded in theory based on behavior patterns across individuals and suggests that cooperation results from some combination of evolved tendency, learned associations, social instigators, and physiological activity. By contrast, the lay view is driven by life experience and personal theory about human behavior. Conclusions: Whether a behavior is "cooperative" will often be a function of who is evaluating it. This poses a challenge for the solution of chronic problems that require coordinated action. This is demonstrated through analysis of expert approaches to greenhouse gas emissions, vaccination, and reduction of water consumption that have each failed to resonate with the public. Highlights and Implications• Scientists and nonscientists have differing views of what it means to be a cooperative person.• Scientists define cooperation as a behavior that results when a person analyzes what they need to do if the group is going to succeed, while nonscientists define it in terms of their personal theory of appropriate behavior for situations like this.• These differing views can result in disagreement over how to resolve chronic social problems that require large-scale behavior change.

Twenty-five years of Group Dynamics: Theory, research and practice: Introduction to the special issue.

“…The third editor of Group Dynamics was Craig Parks from 2008 to 2013. In his review, Parks (2021) takes a big picture look at cooperation and its bearing on larger social issues such as nuclear power, pandemics, and water conservation. It turns out that experts and lay people have very different views on cooperation, and this impacts a population’s cooperation with public policy, for example.…”

“…It turns out that experts and lay people have very different views on cooperation, and this impacts a population’s cooperation with public policy, for example. As Parks (2021) indicates, experts rely on evidence and generalized theory, whereas lay people rely on personal theory and unique experiences when considering cooperating. As an example, Parks looks at views on the perceived danger of nuclear power.…”

“…The result was suboptimal uptake of the vaccine. Further, Parks (2021) stated, “Experts tend to trivialize the value of personal experience and treat laypeople as if they do not fully understand what it means to cooperate, and laypeople tend to dismiss experts as working in idealized worlds where daily pressures on cooperative action are not present” (Parks, 2021). In an intriguing conclusion, Parks suggests that experts incorporate lay experiences and theories into public policy by acknowledging that the experience might influence a person’s willingness to cooperate and by accommodating such experiences in public health communications.…”

“…• Craig Parks (2021) tackles the larger social consequences of cooperation and lack thereof. He highlights that expert and lay views of cooperation can differ.…”

“…Forsyth argues that a clear and definitive view of cohesion is necessary to move the research forward and he presents a new psychometric scale.Dennis Kivlighan (2021) discusses use of actor-partner interdependence models (APIM) and multilevel modeling of grouped data. He points to the need for such data modeling techniques for group researchers to truly estimate complex phenomena that occur in groups.Craig Parks (2021) tackles the larger social consequences of cooperation and lack thereof. He highlights that expert and lay views of cooperation can differ.…”