Co-operation and Competition: Contributions to an Evolutionary and Developmental Model

Abstract

Combining co-operation with other behaviours is hypothesised as a successful strategy for competing for resources. Studies were conducted with 4- to 8-year-olds from India, Malaysia, South Africa, and the United States. Four children were given the opportunity to view a cartoon (the resource), providing two children helped make the cartoon available to a third child for viewing, thereby relegating the fourth child to a bystanding position. The children quickly learned to co-operate, however, viewing times varied significantly between them, suggesting that they were competing against each other even while co-operating. The inequitable outcomes appear due to individual differences in the ability to combine helping others with more competitive behaviours. Children from different cultures were very similar in their behaviour as well as in their production of inequitable outcomes. These findings suggest the presence of a culturally independent strategy that could be viewed as evolutionarily stable.