Problems of Group Living
Cooperative Alliences
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What about Nonrelatives?
• How could altruism among nonrelatives possibly evolve?
This is the problem of [Link]“altruistic”design
feature aids the reproduction of other individuals, even though it causes the altruist who
has this feature to suffer a fitness cost.
• Altruism could evolve if the delivery of benefits to recipient is
reciprocated at some point in the future
• Cooperation, reciprocation, social exchange
first, there is evidence that social exchange—a form of cooperation—occurs
across human cultures and is found frequently in hunter-gatherer cultures that are pre
sumed to resemble the ancestral conditions under which humans evolved. Second,
other species that are far removed from humans, such as vampire bats, also engage in
formsofsocialexchange(Wilkinson,1984).Third,otherprimatesbesideshumans,such
as chimpanzees, baboons, and macaques, also engage in reciprocal helping (de Waal,
1982).Takentogether,thisevidencesuggestsalongevolutionaryhistoryofaltruism.
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Reciprocal Altruism
• Win-win
• Each party receives more in return than the cost
• Those who engage in reciprocal altruism will outreproduce
those who act selfishly
causing psychological mechanisms for reciprocal altruism to spread in succeeding
[Link],inshort,canbedefinedas“cooperationbetweentwoor
moreindividualsformutualbenefit”
• An individual could pretend to be a reciprocal altruist, but then
take benefits without responding later in kind
• We would expect adaptations to solve the problems of detecting
cheaters
This is called the problem of cheating.
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Prisoner’s Dilemma
Inanattempttoget
eachprisonertoraton
(ordefectfrom)the
other,however,
the police tell each that if he
confesses and implicates his
partner, he will be set free and
given a small reward. If both
prisoners confess, however, they
will both be sentenced to
jail. If one confesses and the other
does not, then the implicated
partner will receive a
stiffer sentence than he would
have received if both confessed.
The prisoner’s dilemma is
illustrated in figure 9.1.
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Tit for Tat Thewinningstrategyin“iteratedprisoner’sdilemma”gamesiscalledtit for tat.
The winner
of the tournament, however, employed the simplest
• Cooperate on the first move strategy of all, tit for tat, containing a
merefourlinesofFORTRANstatements.
Ithadtwosimplerules:(1)Cooperate
• Reciprocate on every move thereafter onthefirst
moveand(2)reciprocateonevery
[Link],start
bycooperating,
and continue cooperating if the other is also cooperating.
• Three keys to its success If the other defects, however, then
[Link](1985)aptly
labeledthis“contingentreciprocity.”
• Never be the first to defect
• Retaliate only after the other has defected
• Be forgiving
Axelrod(1984)identifiedthreefeaturesofthisstrategythatrepresentedthekeysto
itssuccess:(1)Never be the first to defect—always start out by cooperating, and continue to
cooperateaslongastheotherplayerdoesalso;(2)retaliate only after the other has defected—
defectimmediatelyafterthefirstinstanceofnonreciprocation;and(3)be forgiving—if a
previously defecting player starts to cooperate, then reciprocate the cooperation and get
[Link]:“First,dountoothersasyouwishthemto
dountoyou,butthendountothemastheyhavejustdonetoyou”
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Cooperation among nonhumans
• Food sharing in vampire bats
• Chimpanzee politics
Vampire bats, known for their survival, live in groups of up to a dozen adult females and their offspring. They feed on cattle and horses, and their
ability to feed increases with age and experience. Axelrod's (1984) analysis of tit for tat suggests strategies for promoting cooperation, including
increasing the shadow of the future, insisting on equity, responding quickly to provocation, and cultivating a personal reputation as a reciprocator.
Cooperative alliances are central to the lives of chimpanzees. They engage in recip
rocal exchange of grooming and food sharing, in which services given roughly equals
theservicesreceivedoverthelongrunwithindyadicrelationshipsMoreover,malesregularlysolicitallianceswith
females,
grooming them and playing with their infants. Without alliances with the females, males
could never attain a position of dominance in the troop.
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The theory of reciprocal altruism predicts that organisms can benefit through cooperative
exchange. There is one problem, however: Many potential exchanges do not occur simul
taneously.
Social Contract Theory
• Capacity 1: The ability to recognize many different individual
humans “Ifyougivemea
benefitandIgetlostina‘seaofanonymousothers’(Axelrod&Hamilton,1981),
you will be vulnerable to being cheated. You must be able to identify me and
• Capacity 2:remembermeasdistinctfromallotherpeople.”
The ability to remember the histories of interactions
with different individuals To maintain a good reputation and track debts, one must remember previous interactions
and use an accounting system to track costs and benefits.
• Capacity 3: The ability to communicate one’s value tostand Ifothers
your friend fails to under
what you want, how can
• Capacity 4: The ability to model the values of others he or she provide the benefits
you need? If you fail
to communicate your anger to a
• Capacity 5: The ability to represent costs and benefitsdefector, you might be
vulnerable to future defec
independent of the particular items exchanged tions.
If you can
detect when people are needy and how they are needy, the benefit you provide can
be tailored to that need.
manyanimalsexchange
a delimited set of items, such as food and sex. Humans, however, can and do
exchange an astonishing array of items—knives and other tools, meat, berries, 7
nuts, fish, shelters, protection, status, access to friends, assistance in fights, sexual
Our Problems with Abstract Logic
Over 50% of college students believe archeologists
are chess players, a false inference. 20% claim no
• Archeologists, Biologists, Chess players valid inferences can be drawn from the premises.
• None of the archeologists are biologists
• All biologists are chess players
What follows from this knowledge?
humanshavenot
evolved to respond to abstract logical problems; they have evolved, however, to respond
to problems structured as social exchanges when they are presented in terms of costs and
benefits.
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Our Ability to Solve Social Problems
• Cheater detection: Evolved ability to respond to problems
structured as social exchanges when they are presented as
People reason correctly when the problem is structured as a social contract. If you
costs and benefits drink beer but are not over twenty-one years old, then you have taken a benefit without
meetingtherequirement(cost)[Link]
wellwhenthey
are“lookingforcheaters,”thosewhohavetakenabenefitwithout
payingthecost.
• If a person is drinking alcohol, then he or she must be eighteen
years old or older.
Youhavetotestthisrule:“Ifaperson
• someone drinking beer isdrinkingalcohol,thenheorshemustbetwenty-oneyears
oldorolder.”Whichofthe
• someone drinking soda following four people do you have to check out to do your job: someone drinking beer,
someone drinking soda, a twenty-five-year-old, or a sixteen-year-old? In contrast to the
• a twenty-five-year-old abstract logic problem above, the vast majority of people correctly select the beer drinker
and the sixteen-year-old. The logic of the problem is identical to the above abstract prob
• a sixteen-year-old lem involving vowels and even numbers. so why are people good at solving this problem
but not the abstract problem?
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he performed extremely poorly on social
contractproblemsofthesort“IfyoutakeabenefitX,you
Cheater detection mustpaythecostY.”This
dissociation between r. M.’s performance on the two types of reasoning tasks
suggests
that social-exchange reasoning might be a separate and specialized
component of the
• R.M.’s damage to OFC & amygdala human cognitive machinery. Interestingly, people with r. M.’s pattern of brain
dam
age are susceptible to scams, exploitative relationships, and unfavorable
business deals
• Perspective Cheater-detection appears to be highly sensitive to the perspective one adopts. Perspective,
in short, appears to govern cheater detection.
if an employee receives a pension after working for ten years, it constitutes a violation of the social contract. Conversely, if
participants consider the employer's perspective, they may find workers who have worked for less than ten years but still
receive a pension
Do People Remember Cheaters?
peoplehavebetter“sourcememory”forthefacesof
cheat
ers—that is, good memory for the specific cheating context in which the face was
• Face recognition findings encoun
tered
• “walk away” rule: people leave in response to groups or
some ground has been broken on the output side
individuals providing
one study found that people remem low cooperative returns by the proposal
ber the faces of known cheaters, especially low-status cheaters, better than they remem thatasimple“walkaway”rulecan 10
berthefacesofknowncooperators evolve,wherebypeopleleavein
Distinct Adaptations
• The Detection of Cheaters
• Those who take benefits without paying the costs
nshort,currentevidencepointstotwodistinct
adaptations
• The Detection of Altruists thatfacilitatetheevolutionofcooperation:(1)the detection of
cheaters (those who take
• Those whose motivation is genuine benefitswithoutpayingcosts)and(2)the detection of
altruists (those whose motivation is
genuine)andthoselikelytobegoodreciprocity
partnersasindicatedbytheirapparent
good health
The logic behind this task is that people who help others only to receive external
credit are not good candidates for helping in the future and so make poor cooperative
allies. Those who help others without seeking credit, on the other hand, display genuine
altruistic tendencies and so would make excellent allies. The correct answer, from the
perspectiveofaltruistdetection,wouldbetoselectthecards“Xhelps”and“Xdoesnot
seekcredit.”
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People report feeling pleasure when they help
others in need without insisting on, or expecting, any future reward. In fact, when a
person insists on immediately repaying us for a favor we have performed, we interpret 12
this as a sign of a lackoffriendship
Indirect reciprocity theory
• Collect “good karma” – through gossip, reputation
Peoplewhoperform
altruistic acts advertise a propensity for generosity and cooperation. others may glean
this information either through direct observation of altruistic acts or through word of
mouth(gossip,reputation).Consequently,theybecomeattractiveasexcellentcoopera
tion partners.
Costly signaling theory
• Signal status and potential for future cooperation
Thefitnessbenefitsfromcostlysignalingcouldcomeinseveralforms:(1)being
preferentiallychosenbyothersforcooperativerelationships,(2)increasedlevelsof cooperationwithinthose
relationships,and(3)higherstatusandreputationwithinthe
group, which could lead to a host of benefits, including higher quality mating opportuni
ties
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Friendships People report feeling pleasure when they help
others in need without insisting on, or expecting, any future reward. In fact, when a
person insists on immediately repaying us for a favor we have performed, we interpret
this as a sign of a lackoffriendship
• Are we really that cynical?
• Should we define altruism only by its cost?
• What about least costly and most beneficial altruism?
• Banker’s paradox The less costly
it is to deliver benefits to others, the more widespread they will be. once
• Who to help adaptations for
delivering benefits to others have evolved, further evolution will act to
• When to help minimize their
costs or even make it beneficial to the actor to deliver such benefits.
• Help irreplaceable/become irreplaceable
They had to
• Choose wisely make critical decisions about to whom to extend credit and when to
extend credit to other
• Friendship criteria individuals. Just as some people are better credit risks for banks,
some people are more
? attractive as objects of our limited ability to assist.
)proposeonesolutiontothisadaptiveproblem:becomingirre
placeable or indispensable to others. The loyalty of your friendship,
according to this reasoning, should be based in part on how irreplaceable each friend
14 has
become.
Costs and Benefits of Friendship
• Benefits
men more than women view sexual
• Sexual access access as a potential benefit of opposite-sex friendship.
• Resources and protection women indeed reported receiving protection from their opposite-sex friends, supporting
this hypothesized benefit.
• Information about members of the opposite sex
Given that opposite-sex friends might be more likely to have infor
• Costs mation about their own gender, men and women should perceive such information as a
benefit of opposite-sex friendship more than of same-sex friendship.
• Intrasexual rivalry
Consequently,same-sexfriendssometimesfind
themselves competing with each other to attract a long-term mate. As predicted, men and
women both reported intrasexual rivalry over mates in their same-sex friendships, although
not at high rates. friends are even perceived as potential mate poachers
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Cooperative Coalitions Onehypothesisisthatanemotioncalled“punitivesentiment”hasevolvedasa
solution to the free-rider problem in the evolution of cooperative coalitions—a desire to
Cooperative Alliances
279
harm“slackers”inthegroup(Priceetal.,2002).Thispunitivesentimentcouldoperate
in at least two ways: to motivate the individual to punish free-riders and to encourage
Alliances of more than two individuals for the purpose of
others in the group also to punish free-riders
collective action to achieve a particular goal
• Problems: Defection during raids involves individuals backing out at critical moments, using excuses like illness or injury.
Among the Yanomamö, some claim issues like a thorn in their foot, while Turkana individuals may simply
• Defection desert. These actions risk the group's success, and repeated defectors are often labeled as cowards.
• Free-riding Free-riders are individuals who benefit from a group's efforts without contributing their fair share, like
someone avoiding paying their part of a restaurant bill. Defection and free-riding threaten the survival of
cooperative groups, as shown in game theory. Without solutions to these problems, defection often becomes
• Solutions the dominant strategy, leading to the collapse of cooperation.
Cooperativecoalitions
• Punishment
Activationoftheserewardcenterswasespecially
can evolve, in principle, as long as free-riders are punished. Experiments show that
[Link]é“revengeis
higher
• Punitive sentiments – revenge is sweet
sweet”appearstrueattheleveloftheunderlyingbrainrewardcenters.
levels of cooperation occur when a system is in place to punish free-riders—inflicting
costs
• Shunning/ostracizing on those who fail to contribute their fair share.
Mathematical models show that shunning or ostracizing non-contributing individuals maintains a good reputation, with those who shunned saving costs
and experiencing intense psychological and physical pain, suggesting a coevolved [Link]
“punitivesentiment”hasevolvedasa
solution to the free-rider problem in the evolution of cooperative coalitions—a desire to harm“slackers”inthegroup(Priceetal.,
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2002).Thispunitivesentimentcouldoperate
Cooperative Coalitions
• Competitive altruism: Status serves as a “magnet” for other
benefits such as enhanced desirability as an alliance partner
and as a potential mate
An alternative explanation is that altruistic punishers receive reputational benefits
frompunishing(Alexander,1987;Barclay,2006).Areputationasapunisherofnonco
operatorscouldbenefitthepunisher(1)ifothersarelesslikelytocheatknownaltruistic
punishers(perhapsduetofearofbeingpunishedthemselves)or(2)ifaltruisticpunishers
are more often sought out for cooperative relationships because they are perceived as
[Link](2006)
discovered that altruistic punishers are indeed seen as more trustworthy, more group
focused,andmoreworthyofrespectthannonpunishers
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