The evolution of reciprocity in sizable human groups

Rothschild, Casey

doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2009.01.004

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…However, reciprocity is a discernable pattern of behavior when individual actions are observable, particularly in settings that experiments are designed to mimic. Furthermore, reciprocal strategies evolved to support cooperative behavior, [9,20,21,30] so observations of reciprocal behavior can signal a simultaneous observation of cooperation to some degree. Measuring cooperation in the real world therefore entails detecting processes that sustain it and comparing them to patterns found in a laboratory or theoretical setting.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observational evidence that economic reciprocity pervades self-organized food co-operatives

Lange¹,

Smolla²,

Waring³

2022

Preprint

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Evolutionary scientists argue that cooperation is central to human ecological success. Theoretical models, and behavioral experiments have found that human cooperation is conditional and context dependent, that individuals vary in their propensity to cooperate, and that cooperation can be stabilized by reciprocity within a group. However, outside of behavioral experiments, these findings have been difficult to validate with observations of cooperation in natural settings, especially in industrial societies, cash economies and structured organizational contexts. Here, we report in situ observations of behavioral cooperation and reciprocity from organizations embedded in a cash economy. We study small consumer food cooperatives or ‘food clubs’, in which members share bulk food purchases, and are considered to be heavily dependent on cooperation. We take advantage of a high-resolution purchasing dataset of all economic interactions for 1,528 individuals across 35 clubs, including 10,261 bulk purchases over a combined total of 107 years of club purchasing data. We develop a network method to detect economic reciprocity, categorize economic behavior as directly reciprocal, indirectly reciprocal, or non-reciprocal, and statistically classify individual behavioral types (reciprocator, helper, and beneficiary). Observed patterns of reciprocity confirm the central findings of theoretical and experimental studies. Reciprocity is highly abundant in most clubs, with direct reciprocity far more common (72%) than indirect reciprocity (11%). Reciprocators are the most common (69%) and the most stable behavioral type, but clubs vary significantly. Our results provide some of the first observational evidence of economic reciprocity and cooperation generally. They imply that cooperation may be a more important force in industrial societies, organizational contexts, and cash economies than currently understood. These results solidify the findings of the behavioral study of cooperation and open the door for greater study and application of cooperation in organizational management and economic policy.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observational evidence that economic reciprocity pervades self-organized food co-operatives

Lange¹,

Smolla²,

Waring³

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It has been observed that there is a possibility of graded strategies other than TFT in those situations where individuals interact with many other individuals simultaneously [9]. In such situations, reciprocal cooperation crucially depends on group size [10]. In addition, continuous strategies may perform better when group size increases [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of conditional cooperation in public good games

Battu

Srinivasan

2020

R. Soc. open sci.

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Cooperation declines in repeated public good games because individuals behave as conditional cooperators. This is because individuals imitate the social behaviour of successful individuals when their payoff information is available. However, in human societies, individuals cooperate in many situations involving social dilemmas. We hypothesize that humans are sensitive to both success (payoffs) and how that success was obtained, by cheating (not socially sanctioned) or good behaviour (socially sanctioned and adds to prestige or reputation), when information is available about payoffs and prestige. We propose and model a repeated public good game with heterogeneous conditional cooperators where an agent's donation in a public goods game depends on comparing the number of donations in the population in the previous round and with the agent's arbitrary chosen conditional cooperative criterion. Such individuals imitate the social behaviour of role models based on their payoffs and prestige. The dependence is modelled by two population-level parameters: affinity towards payoff and affinity towards prestige . These affinities influence the degree to which agents value the payoff and prestige of role models. Agents update their conditional strategies by considering both parameters. The simulations in this study show that high levels of cooperation are established in a population consisting of heterogeneous conditional cooperators for a certain range of affinity parameters in repeated public good games. The results show that social value (prestige) is important in establishing cooperation.

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The Norm of Reciprocity in Intergroup Context: A Normative-Identity Model

Üzümçeker

Akfırat

2023

Integr. psych. behav.

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The evolution of reciprocity in sizable human groups

Cited by 4 publications

References 42 publications

Observational evidence that economic reciprocity pervades self-organized food co-operatives

Observational evidence that economic reciprocity pervades self-organized food co-operatives

Evolution of conditional cooperation in public good games

The Norm of Reciprocity in Intergroup Context: A Normative-Identity Model

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