Human Cooperation Perspectives from Behavioral Ecology

Humans, like all social species, face various collective action problems (difficulties achieving potential benefits from cooperating when coordination is required or individuals have incentives to defect). Humans solve these problems through various means: communication, monitoring, enforcement, and selective incentives. This chapter summarizes the theory and evidence on human cooperation found in the field of human behavioral ecology, categorized topically: resource sharing, cooperative production, aid-giving, and coalition-based conflict. A more speculative question is then addressed, “Why are humans so cooperative?” The suggested answers revolve around linguistic communication, technology, and coalitional behavior. In particular, language clearly increases the likelihood of solving coordination games and appears to lower the cost of monitoring and enforcement in other payoff environments. Language is also likely to enhance signaling and reputation effects. Technology and complex division of labor increase fitness interdependencies between individuals, and the potential payoffs to coalition members; these in turn provide new opportunities for development of norms and institutions to solve collective action problems. The chapter closes with some caveats about the limits to human cooperation.

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