Long-term social bonds promote cooperation in the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma

St-Pierre, Angèle; Larose, Karine; Dubois, Frédérique

doi:10.1098/rspb.2009.1156

Cited by 60 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…The exchange of blood meals in vampire bats depends primarily on demand and previously received help [105], but a long-term relationship between social partners and frequent interactions may be prerequisites of such successful reciprocation. This has been suggested also by experimental results in zebra finches, which maintained high levels of cooperation in an iterated prisoner's dilemma game involving a time delay between the reciprocal exchange of help only when interacting with a long-term social partner [100]. Uncertainty caused by the delay of returned benefits can be reduced by a high interaction frequency, which is a common feature of close social relations and partnerships.…”

Section: Which Conditions Select For Reciprocity?mentioning

confidence: 74%

Correlated pay-offs are key to cooperation

Taborsky

Frommen

Riehl

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

124

199

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One contribution of 18 to a theme issue 'The evolution of cooperation based on direct fitness benefits.' Subject Areas: behaviour, evolution, ecology Keywords: cooperation, reciprocity, commodity trading, direct fitness benefits, non-kin, decision rules The general belief that cooperation and altruism in social groups result primarily from kin selection has recently been challenged, not least because results from cooperatively breeding insects and vertebrates have shown that groups may be composed mainly of non-relatives. This allows testing predictions of reciprocity theory without the confounding effect of relatedness. Here, we review complementary and alternative evolutionary mechanisms to kin selection theory and provide empirical examples of cooperative behaviour among unrelated individuals in a wide range of taxa. In particular, we focus on the different forms of reciprocity and on their underlying decision rules, asking about evolutionary stability, the conditions selecting for reciprocity and the factors constraining reciprocal cooperation. We find that neither the cognitive requirements of reciprocal cooperation nor the often sequential nature of interactions are insuperable stumbling blocks for the evolution of reciprocity. We argue that simple decision rules such as 'help anyone if helped by someone' should get more attention in future research, because empirical studies show that animals apply such rules, and theoretical models find that they can create stable levels of cooperation under a wide range of conditions. Owing to its simplicity, behaviour based on such a heuristic may in fact be ubiquitous. Finally, we argue that the evolution of exchange and trading of service and commodities among social partners needs greater scientific focus.

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Section: Which Conditions Select For Reciprocity?mentioning

confidence: 74%

Correlated pay-offs are key to cooperation

Taborsky

Frommen

Riehl

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

124

199

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“…Animals often are prosocial, displaying behaviors that result in a benefit to one another [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] even in the absence of self-benefit [16][17][18][19][20][21] (but see [22][23][24][25]). Several factors have been proposed to modulate these behaviors, namely familiarity [6,13,18,20] or display of seeking behavior [16,21].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosocial Choice in Rats Depends on Food-Seeking Behavior Displayed by Recipients

et al. 2015

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Animals often are prosocial, displaying behaviors that result in a benefit to one another [1-15] even in the absence of self-benefit [16-21] (but see [22-25]). Several factors have been proposed to modulate these behaviors, namely familiarity [6, 13, 18, 20] or display of seeking behavior [16, 21]. Rats have been recently shown to be prosocial under distress [17, 18] (but see [26-29]); however, what drives prosociality in these animals remains unclear. To address this issue, we developed a two-choice task in which prosocial behavior did not yield a benefit or a cost to the focal rat. We used a double T-maze in which only the focal rat controlled access to the food-baited arms of its own and the recipient rat's maze. In this task, the focal rat could choose between one side of the maze, which yielded food only to itself (selfish choice), and the opposite side, which yielded food to itself and the recipient rat (prosocial choice). Rats showed a high proportion of prosocial choices. By manipulating reward delivery to the recipient and its ability to display a preference for the baited arm, we found that the display of food-seeking behavior leading to reward was necessary to drive prosocial choices. In addition, we found that there was more social investigation between rats in selfish trials than in prosocial trials, which may have influenced the focals' choices. This study shows that rats provide access to food to others in the absence of added direct self-benefit, bringing new insights into the factors that drive prosociality.

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“…One implication of these observations is that partner allopreening could be vulnerable to cheating, in which one partner solicits and receives allopreening but does not reciprocate. Recent experimental tests of cooperation and prisoner's dilemma in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) showed that individuals engaged in a generous tit-for-tat strategy in which they cooperated in a food-sharing task even if their established partners occasionally defected (St-Pierre et al 2009). If buff-breasted wren partners engage in a similar strategy, immediate defection may be unimportant, because longterm partnerships provide a chance for future reciprocation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategic use of allopreening in family-living wrens

Gill

2012

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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A prominent interaction in the lives of social mammals is allogrooming. Individuals allogroom strategically and preferentially, grooming high-quality individuals that control access to resources. This results in distinct patterns of allogrooming within social groups, such that some individuals are groomed more than the others, some dyads express symmetry in allogrooming, and others exchange allogrooming for other benefits. Allopreening, the avian equivalent of allogrooming, occurs commonly in group-living birds, providing the opportunity to test whether social birds also use allopreening strategically in their social relationships. I examined this hypothesis in family-living buff-breasted wrens (Cantorchilus leucotis) by examining allopreening initiation, reciprocation and rate during interactions involving breeding adults and offspring. Buffbreasted wrens exhibit a nuclear family structure in which pairs display long-term partnerships, and juveniles delay dispersing from natal territories for about 10 months. Allopreening was symmetrical between breeding partners: males and females who initiated and reciprocated allopreening of partners with similar frequency, and within reciprocated bouts, allopreening was time-matched. Pairs in which allopreening was not observed were more likely to divorce, but allopreening patterns did not change in successive years of partnerships. Parentoffspring allopreening, by contrast, was asymmetrical in pattern; parents initiated allopreening more than their offspring, and reciprocation never occurred. The different patterns of allopreening observed within buff-breasted wren families suggest the strategic use of allopreening, possibly for the maintenance of long-term partnerships and in exchange for social benefits from offspring.

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Long-term social bonds promote cooperation in the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma

Cited by 60 publications

References 36 publications

Correlated pay-offs are key to cooperation

Correlated pay-offs are key to cooperation

Prosocial Choice in Rats Depends on Food-Seeking Behavior Displayed by Recipients

Strategic use of allopreening in family-living wrens

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