1
|
Li Y, Liu Z, Wang Y, Derrington E, Moisan F, Dreher JC. Spillover effects of competition outcome on future risky cooperation. Sci Rep 2023; 13:5535. [PMID: 37015992 PMCID: PMC10073108 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-32523-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/15/2022] [Accepted: 03/29/2023] [Indexed: 04/06/2023] Open
Abstract
There is growing evidence that risky cooperation is regulated by the experience of previous interactions with others. However, it is unclear how the evaluation of outcomes from competitive interactions can affect individuals' subsequent cooperative behavior. To address this issue, we examined how participants cooperated with a partner having just competed with them. While competing, participants (N = 164) were randomly assigned to receive one of four types of outcome feedback regarding their performance (victory vs. defeat vs. uncertain vs. no competition (control)). We found that both the experience of defeats and of uncertainty as competitive outcomes exerted a negative impact on the extent to which participants then engaged in cooperative behavior with their recent opponents. This only occurred when such subsequent cooperative behavior involved a high potential for incurring personal costs but not when there was no risk of incurring personal costs and a positive return. Finally, mediation analysis revealed that the effect of defeat was mediated by participants' level of interpersonal trust and the extent to which participants were willing to cooperate, while the effect of the uncertain competitive outcome was mediated only by the extent to which participants were willing to cooperate. These findings offer novel insights into how risky cooperation is modulated by previous competition.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Yansong Li
- Reward, Competition, and Social Neuroscience Lab, Department of Psychology, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Xianlin Avenue 163, Nanjing, 210023, China.
- Department of Radiology, The Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China.
- Institute for Brain Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
| | | | - Yuqian Wang
- Reward, Competition, and Social Neuroscience Lab, Department of Psychology, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Xianlin Avenue 163, Nanjing, 210023, China
| | | | | | | |
Collapse
|
2
|
Lozano P, Antonioni A, Sánchez A. On the interplay of hierarchies, conflicts, and cooperation: An experimental approach. PNAS NEXUS 2023; 2:pgac283. [PMID: 36712929 PMCID: PMC9837665 DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac283] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/09/2022] [Accepted: 12/03/2022] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
Previous research suggests that it is difficult to maintain cooperation in a large society when there is a strong hierarchical structure. In this study, we implement online human experiments to study the effects of exogenous variation in a particular notion of hierarchy on cooperation and conflict within groups. We demonstrate how cooperation can be maintained when collective action is accompanied by dyadic conflicts whose outcome feeds back on the hierarchical rank of the contestants. We find that the majority of individuals take part in conflicts and that highly ranked individuals mostly cooperate and engage in conflicts as a way to punish noncooperators. As a consequence, stable hierarchical groups can arise and maintain high levels of cooperation. Our results are in agreement with the prediction of earlier theoretical models on hierarchical societies and are relevant to understanding the interplay of hierarchy, cooperation, and conflict.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Pablo Lozano
- Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (GISC), Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911 Leganés, Madrid, Spain
- Department of Networks and Data Science, Central European University, Quellenstraße 51, A-1100 Vienna, Austria
| | - Alberto Antonioni
- Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (GISC), Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911 Leganés, Madrid, Spain
| | - Angel Sánchez
- Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (GISC), Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911 Leganés, Madrid, Spain
- Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI), University of Zaragoza, 50018 Zaragoza, Spain
| |
Collapse
|
3
|
Takács K, Gross J, Testori M, Letina S, Kenny AR, Power EA, Wittek RPM. Networks of reliable reputations and cooperation: a review. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2021; 376:20200297. [PMID: 34601917 PMCID: PMC8487750 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0297] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Reputation has been shown to provide an informal solution to the problem of cooperation in human societies. After reviewing models that connect reputations and cooperation, we address how reputation results from information exchange embedded in a social network that changes endogenously itself. Theoretical studies highlight that network topologies have different effects on the extent of cooperation, since they can foster or hinder the flow of reputational information. Subsequently, we review models and empirical studies that intend to grasp the coevolution of reputations, cooperation and social networks. We identify open questions in the literature concerning how networks affect the accuracy of reputations, the honesty of shared information and the spread of reputational information. Certain network topologies may facilitate biased beliefs and intergroup competition or in-group identity formation that could lead to high cooperation within but conflicts between different subgroups of a network. Our review covers theoretical, experimental and field studies across various disciplines that target these questions and could explain how the dynamics of interactions and reputations help or prevent the establishment and sustainability of cooperation in small- and large-scale societies. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling’.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Károly Takács
- The Institute for Analytical Sociology, Linköping University, 601 74 Norrköping, Sweden.,Computational Social Science-Research Center for Educational and Network Studies (CSS-RECENS), Centre for Social Sciences, Tóth Kálmán u. 4., 1097 Budapest, Hungary
| | - Jörg Gross
- Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK, Leiden, The Netherlands
| | - Martina Testori
- Organization Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Srebrenka Letina
- The Institute for Analytical Sociology, Linköping University, 601 74 Norrköping, Sweden.,Institute of Health and Wellbeing, MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Berkeley Square, 99 Berkeley Street, Glasgow G3 7HR, UK
| | - Adam R Kenny
- Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford, 64 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PN, UK.,Calleva Research Centre for Evolution and Human Sciences, Magdalen College, High Street, Oxford OX1 4AU, UK
| | - Eleanor A Power
- Department of Methodology, The London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK
| | - Rafael P M Wittek
- Department of Sociology, University of Groningen, Grote Rozenstraat 31, 9712 TG Groningen, The Netherlands
| |
Collapse
|
4
|
Kirkland K, Jetten J, Wilks M, Nielsen M. Children’s experience of economic inequality: How earning position influences prosocial behavior. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101043] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
|
5
|
Lozano P, Gavrilets S, Sánchez A. Cooperation, social norm internalization, and hierarchical societies. Sci Rep 2020; 10:15359. [PMID: 32958841 PMCID: PMC7506014 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-71664-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2020] [Accepted: 06/05/2020] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Many animal and human societies exhibit hierarchical structures with different degrees of steepness. Some of these societies also show cooperative behavior, where cooperation means working together for a common benefit. However, there is an increasing evidence that rigidly enforced hierarchies lead to a decrease of cooperation in both human and non-human primates. In this work, we address this issue by means of an evolutionary agent-based model that incorporates fights as social interactions governing a dynamic ranking, communal work to produce a public good, and norm internalization, i.e. a process where acting according to a norm becomes a goal in itself. Our model also includes the perception of how much the individual is going to retain from her cooperative behavior in future interactions. The predictions of the model resemble the principal characteristics of human societies. When ranking is unconstrained, we observe a high concentration of agents in low scores, while a few ones climb up the social hierarchy and exploit the rest, with no norm internalization. If ranking is constrained, thus leading to bounded score differences between agents, individual positions in the ranking change more, and the typical structure shows a division of the society in upper and lower classes. In this case, we observe that there is a significant degree of norm internalization, supporting large fractions of the population cooperating in spite of the rank differences. Our main results are robust with respect to the model parameters and to the type of rank constraint. We thus provide a mechanism that can explain how hierarchy arises in initially egalitarian societies while keeping a large degree of cooperation.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Pablo Lozano
- Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos, Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911, Leganés, Madrid, Spain. .,Unidad Mixta Interdisciplinar de Comportamiento y Complejidad Social (UMICCS), Madrid, Spain.
| | - Sergey Gavrilets
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Department of Mathematics, National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA
| | - Angel Sánchez
- Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos, Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911, Leganés, Madrid, Spain.,Unidad Mixta Interdisciplinar de Comportamiento y Complejidad Social (UMICCS), Madrid, Spain.,Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI), University of Zaragoza, 50018, Zaragoza, Spain.,UC3M-Santander Big Data Institute (IBiDat), Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28903, Getafe, Madrid, Spain
| |
Collapse
|
6
|
Claessens S, Fischer K, Chaudhuri A, Sibley CG, Atkinson QD. The dual evolutionary foundations of political ideology. Nat Hum Behav 2020; 4:336-345. [PMID: 32231279 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-020-0850-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 41] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/17/2019] [Accepted: 03/03/2020] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
Research over the last fifty years has suggested that political attitudes and values around the globe are shaped by two ideological dimensions, often referred to as economic and social conservatism. However, it remains unclear why this ideological structure exists. Here we highlight the striking concordance between these dual dimensions of ideology and independent convergent evidence for two key shifts in the evolution of human group living. First, humans began to cooperate more and across wider interdependent networks. Second, humans became more group-minded, conforming to social norms in culturally marked groups and punishing norm-violators. We propose that fitness trade-offs and behavioural plasticity have maintained functional variation in willingness to cooperate and conform within modern human groups, naturally giving rise to the two dimensions of political ideology. Supported by evidence from across the behavioural sciences, this evolutionary framework provides insight into the biological and cultural basis of political ideology.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Scott Claessens
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Kyle Fischer
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Ananish Chaudhuri
- Department of Economics, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.,CESifo, Munich, Germany
| | - Chris G Sibley
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Quentin D Atkinson
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. .,Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
| |
Collapse
|
7
|
Collaborative hierarchy maintains cooperation in asymmetric games. Sci Rep 2018; 8:5375. [PMID: 29599531 PMCID: PMC5876345 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-23681-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/15/2017] [Accepted: 03/12/2018] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
The interplay of social structure and cooperative behavior is under much scrutiny lately as behavior in social contexts becomes increasingly relevant for everyday life. Earlier experimental work showed that the existence of a social hierarchy, earned through competition, was detrimental for the evolution of cooperative behaviors. Here, we study the case in which individuals are ranked in a hierarchical structure based on their performance in a collective effort by having them play a Public Goods Game. In the first treatment, participants are ranked according to group earnings while, in the second treatment, their rankings are based on individual earnings. Subsequently, participants play asymmetric Prisoner’s Dilemma games where higher-ranked players gain more than lower ones. Our experiments show that there are no detrimental effects of the hierarchy formed based on group performance, yet when ranking is assigned individually we observe a decrease in cooperation. Our results show that different levels of cooperation arise from the fact that subjects are interpreting rankings as a reputation which carries information about which subjects were cooperators in the previous phase. Our results demonstrate that noting the manner in which a hierarchy is established is essential for understanding its effects on cooperation.
Collapse
|
8
|
Massen JJM, Bauer L, Spurny B, Bugnyar T, Kret ME. Sharing of science is most likely among male scientists. Sci Rep 2017; 7:12927. [PMID: 29018248 PMCID: PMC5635125 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-13491-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/28/2017] [Accepted: 09/25/2017] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
Humans are considered to be highly prosocial, especially in comparison to other species. However, most tests of prosociality are conducted in highly artificial settings among anonymous participants. To gain a better understanding of how human hyper-cooperation may have evolved, we tested humans' willingness to share in one of the most competitive fields of our current society: academia. Researchers were generally prosocial with 80% sharing a PDF of one of their latest papers, and almost 60% willing to send us their data. Intriguingly, prosociality was most prominent from male to male, and less likely among all other sex-combinations. This pattern suggests the presence of male-exclusive networks in science, and may be based on an evolutionary history promoting strong male bonds.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Jorg J M Massen
- Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
| | - Lisa Bauer
- Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Benjamin Spurny
- Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Thomas Bugnyar
- Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Mariska E Kret
- Cognitive Psychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
- Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), Leiden, The Netherlands
| |
Collapse
|
9
|
Ellinas C, Allan N, Johansson A. Dynamics of organizational culture: Individual beliefs vs. social conformity. PLoS One 2017; 12:e0180193. [PMID: 28665960 PMCID: PMC5493361 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0180193] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/13/2017] [Accepted: 06/12/2017] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The complex nature of organizational culture challenges our ability to infer its underlying dynamics from observational studies. Recent computational studies have adopted a distinctly different view, where plausible mechanisms are proposed to describe a wide range of social phenomena, including the onset and evolution of organizational culture. In this spirit, this work introduces an empirically-grounded, agent-based model which relaxes a set of assumptions that describes past work–(a) omittance of an individual’s strive for achieving cognitive coherence; (b) limited integration of important contextual factors—by utilizing networks of beliefs and incorporating social rank into the dynamics. As a result, we illustrate that: (i) an organization may appear to be increasingly coherent in terms of its organizational culture, yet be composed of individuals with reduced levels of coherence; (ii) the components of social conformity—peer-pressure and social rank—are influential at different aggregation levels.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Christos Ellinas
- Engineering Mathematics, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
- Systemic Consult Ltd, Bradford-on-Avon, United Kingdom
- * E-mail:
| | - Neil Allan
- Systemic Consult Ltd, Bradford-on-Avon, United Kingdom
- Systems IDC, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
| | | |
Collapse
|
10
|
Zhang C, Zhu Y, Chen Z, Zhang J. Punishment in the form of shared cost promotes altruism in the cooperative dilemma games. J Theor Biol 2017; 420:128-134. [PMID: 28284989 DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2017.03.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2016] [Revised: 03/03/2017] [Accepted: 03/07/2017] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
Abstract
One phenomenon or social institution often observed in multi-agent interactions is the altruistic punishment, i.e. the punishment of unfair behavior by others at a personal cost. Inspired by the works focusing on punishment and the intricate mechanism behind it, we theoretically study the strategy evolution in the framework of two-strategy game models with the punishment on defectors, moreover, the cost of punishing will be evenly shared among the cooperators. Theoretical computations suggest that larger punishment on defectors or smaller punishment cost incurred by cooperators will enhance the fixation of altruistic cooperation in the population. Through the replicate dynamics, the group size of the randomly selected individuals from the sufficiently large population will notably affect the strategy evolution in populations nested within a dilemma. By theoretical modeling the concept of shared cost for punishment from one point of view, our findings underscore the importance of punishment with shared cost as a factor in real-life decisions in an evolutionary game context.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Chunyan Zhang
- Department of Automation, College of Computer and Control Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, PR China; Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics, College of Computer and Control Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, PR China
| | - Yuying Zhu
- Department of Automation, College of Computer and Control Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, PR China; Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics, College of Computer and Control Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, PR China
| | - Zengqiang Chen
- Department of Automation, College of Computer and Control Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, PR China; Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics, College of Computer and Control Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, PR China
| | - Jianlei Zhang
- Department of Automation, College of Computer and Control Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, PR China; Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics, College of Computer and Control Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, PR China.
| |
Collapse
|