We evolved to compete and cooperate

• Those who cooperate can reproduce faster than who don’t,
• but there’s still competition for food and mates within a group.
• Individuals can pretend to cooperate but secretly “defect” or “free-ride.”
• Humans are sensitive to others’ deceit/intentions.

Cooperation needs attention

Who cooperates, defects, & deceives?

Sources of cooperation

direct reciprocity

via repeated exchange (bats)

indirect reciprocity

via reputation for helping (your good name)

spatial selection

via social structure of helping neighbors (yeast)

multilevel/group selection

self-sacrificing members of your group help out-compete others (your tribe)

kin selection

via helping family members (siblings) (Nowak 2012)

Dunbar’s number

How much time do you spend gossiping?

. . .

65% (Dunbar 2004, pp. 104-105)

If cooperation is so powerful, why do group projects so often suck?

Tragedy of commons (ToC)

ToC conditions

1. non-excludable (can’t limit others consumption)
2. rivalrous (their consumption affects yours)

What to do?

Examples of cooperation, privatization, & regulation?

Public goods

PG conditions

1. non-excludable (can’t limit others consumption)
2. non-rivalrous (their consumption doesn’t affect yours)

beware of free-riders!

ToC or PG??

• Boston commons
• light house
• NE fishing stock
• fire department
• clean water
• creative works (stories and music)

ToC or PG online??

. . .

• Tragedy of Commons
  • web ads and app notifications (exhausting our attention)
• Public Good
  • online content (we all benefit, but who pays?)

Prisoner’s dilemma

A caveat

Cooperation has a positive connotation, gossip less so; neither are inherently good—especially some gossip.

However, thugs cooperate to harm the innocent, and gossip plays a role in silencing victims and their communities (e.g., in omertà, “snitches get stitches,” and the “blue wall of silence” group members gossip to identify who “defected.”)

Ultimatum game

I need 2 volunteers.

1. I give $10 to the Divider, who decides how to divide it with the Recipient (0-100%).
2. The Recipient decides whether the division is acceptable or if the whole deal is scratched.

. . .

Did the Recipient choose to penalize herself to punish the Divider?

3rd-party variation

I need 3 volunteers.

1. I give $10 to the Divider, who decides how to divide it with the Recipient (0-100%) .
2. I give $5 to the 3rd-party.
3. The Recipient receives whatever the Divider chose.
4. The 3rd-party can pay to penalize the Divider: for every $1 she spends, the Divider loses $2.

Did the 3rd party pay to punish?

Altruistic punishment

punish, perhaps at one’s own expense, someone else with no immediate personal gain.

60% of 3rd-parties choose to pay to punish the Decider if she shares less than half her endowment.

• Though perhaps this game should be called “costly punishment” and we ought remember “winners don’t punish.” (Nowak 2012, p. 31)

Evolution of cooperation

What strategy does best when playing over multiple rounds?

• always cooperate?
• always defect?
• random/unpredictable?

Solutions to social dilemmas

• government intervention
• privatization
• Ostrom’s institutions of collective action (boundaries, rules, graduated sanctions)
• altruistic punishment: paying a small cost to punish a violator without direct benefit (e.g., telling someone who cut in line behind you to go to the end of the line)
• trust & culture

What concept could explain??

Wrap-up

1. Did we evolve to be competitive or cooperative?
2. What are two game-theory dilemmas that demonstrate the interaction of competition and cooperation?
3. What are two social dilemmas that get in the way of cooperation?

Review quiz

1. Why is the prisoner’s dilemma a dilemma?
2. What is altruistic punishment, what game did we see it in?
3. ✓ where appropriate

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