Between-group competition and human cooperation
Open Access
- 30 September 2008
- journal article
- Published by The Royal Society in Proceedings Of The Royal Society B-Biological Sciences
- Vol. 276 (1655), 355-360
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2008.1060
Abstract
A distinctive feature of human behaviour is the widespread occurrence of cooperation among unrelated individuals. Explaining the maintenance of costly within-group cooperation is a challenge because the incentive to free ride on the efforts of other group members is expected to lead to decay of cooperation. However, the costs of cooperation can be diminished or overcome when there is competition at a higher level of organizational hierarchy. Here we show that competition between groups resolves the paradigmatic ‘public goods’ social dilemma and increases within-group cooperation and overall productivity. Further, group competition intensifies the moral emotions of anger and guilt associated with violations of the cooperative norm. The results suggest an important role for group conflict in the evolution of human cooperation and moral emotions.Keywords
This publication has 26 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and WarScience, 2007
- The Sharp End of AltruismScience, 2007
- Group Competition, Reproductive Leveling, and the Evolution of Human AltruismScience, 2006
- Group Morality and Intergroup Relations: Cross-Cultural and Experimental EvidencePersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2006
- Parochial altruism in humansNature, 2006
- The evolution of altruistic punishmentProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2003
- Solving the freeloaders paradox: Genetic associations and frequency-dependent selection in the evolution of cooperation among nonrelativesProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2002
- Social identification effects in social dilemmas: a transformation of motivesEuropean Journal of Social Psychology, 1999
- The Evolution of CooperationScience, 1981
- The descent of man, and Selection in relation to sex, Vol 2.Published by American Psychological Association (APA) ,1871