The calculus of cooperation
…cooperative behavior results from a rational calculus encoded as a behavior in our genetic makeup. It turns out that we can almost never be sure that someone might not be in a position to return the favor in the future, and we do not want to miss out on that possibility. The cost of losing out is greater than the cost of making the investment.
The unpredictable vagaries of human social life help explain one of the conundrums of evolutionary biology and economics: why individuals engage in random acts of generosity when there is no obvious payback.
To begin, in acting generously, the donor incurs a cost to benefit someone else. But choosing to incur a cost with no prospect of a compensating benefit is seen as maladaptive by biologists and irrational by many economists.
If such theories are true, such behaviors should have been weeded out long ago by evolution or by self-interest. Human nature is fundamentally self-serving, it is believed, with any “excess” generosity the result of social pressure or cultural conformity.
…generosity would appear to be an innate trait, and more than just a response to social pressure (as in tipping your waiter) or trying to leave a good impression.
NOTES
Where is says, “If such theories are true, such behaviors should have been weeded out long ago by evolution or by self-interest…generosity would appear to be an innate trait, and more than just a response to social pressure”, I’m not convinced, as this could be answered by the theory of multi-level selection, see Altruism is only locally disadvantageous.
Cooperation is a fact of survival and reproduction…we needed to band in groups in order to hunt, and avoid being hunted.
Yes the world is different now as “survival” in the sense of food is generally not the same situation as in ancient life…but we have inherited these instincts from our evolutionary past.
But I do like the premise of this, it continues to say:
“There are two errors a cooperating animal can make, and one is more costly than the other,” said Cosmides.
“Believing that you will never meet this individual again, you might choose to benefit yourself at his expense — only to find out later that the relationship could have been open-ended. If you make this error, you lose out on all the benefits you might have had from a long-term, perhaps life-long, cooperative relationship.”
Cosmides called this ”an extraordinarily costly error to make. The other error is to mistakenly assume that you will have additional interactions with the other individual and therefore cooperate with him, only to find out later that it wasn’t necessary. Although you were ‘unnecessarily’ nice in that one interaction, the cost of this error is relatively small. Without knowing why, the mind is skewed to be generous to make sure we find and cement all those valuable, long-term relationships.”
NOTES
Now this is interesting as nowadays we don’t live solely in tribal groups as much (with food and survival making up most of the attention and time of our day). In our ancient past perhaps cooperation wasn’t too much of a frontal cortex decision-making process; since we lived in groups, it was a no-brainer that being cooperative would be reciprocated as part of the cultural fabric of your tribal network…who wants to be outed of the group and face lions and hunger on their own.
But nowadays, where the social organism has outgrown the social network ie. we don’t just live in close groups, we live among a network of people (eg cities), we live in a different dynamic which requires a different decision-making process ie. there is uncertainty whether cooperating is worth your while. Since you may not be in a tribal group with this person, then there’s uncertainty whether your cooperative actions are a waste of time or a benefit.
As the article says, we choose to help out, just in case, as there’s more of a cost of not doing it…effort for potential value type of thing.
So in the end the whole act of whether to be altruistic/cooperative is a selfish act.
Or is it a selfish act? The article says:
“People who help only when they can see a gain do worse than those who are motivated to be generous without always looking ahead to see what they might get in return.”
ie. if we have the outlook of cooperating by default (due to the cost-benefit concept), perhaps it just becomes a part of us.
Bruce Tizes (via a private facebook group)
…cooperative behavior is more likely to return future value in a small, closed group. altruistic and/or cooperative behaviors which do not provide immediate reward to the actor are more difficult to understand behaviorally in open, large groups
Related
Altruism is no myth. It is a reality the power of which we are only beginning to recognize
Where does altruism fit into this…mammals seek dominance because the serotonin feels good
The drive to compete comes mainly from scarcity, not only human nature
Selfishness as the root of indirect public benefit
Where do you think human empathy came from?
Where everything started for me was maternal care. It’s advantageous for female mammals to be sensitive to the mood states of their offspring, so they react when their offspring are distressed or in danger. That also explains why empathy is more developed in females than males in many species, including humans. From there it spread to other areas of social life. It’s contagious: if you have a cooperative society, you need to be concerned about the well-being of those you depend on.
There’s nothing wrong with saying that empathy evolved for reasons to serve yourself, or that cooperation evolved in the end to serve yourself. But that needs to be distinguished from what we call the proximate reasons for behavior, or the proximate motivations for behavior. They concern psychology—what makes you do something.
You’ve talked yourself into a corner if you are an atheist—as Huxley was and as Dawkins is—and you think evolution cannot produce morality. Then it’s a real dilemma—where does it come from? If it does not come from biology, and you don’t believe in religion, you’re going to have a very hard time explaining why humans are moral.
