Human Cooperation

Abstract.  Cooperation is fundamental to human interactions and societies, and understanding cooperation is crucial for solving problems that require collective action. The study of human cooperation is intrinsically interdisciplinary, involving fields including evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, political science, computer science, and economics. The goal of this working group is to bring together researchers who study human cooperation from these disciplinary perspectives, familiarize each participant with the contributions of the other fields to understanding human cooperation, and synthesize a list of the most interesting and important remaining questions. In short presentations, each participant will first summarize three major questions on which her field has focused in the past, as well as the conclusions the field has reached about those questions. Next, she will list and explain the three major questions that she thinks represent the future of human cooperation research in her field. After all of the presentations, the group will engage in guided discussion to find the commonalities between the identified questions, in order to assemble a short list of the questions that, across fields, are the next steps in understanding human cooperation. At the conclusion of the working group, each participant will have increased knowledge of what other fields have done, and compiling the list of future questions will facilitate collaborations between participants to answer those questions. In addition to those collaborations, the product of the working group will be a review paper, "Outstanding questions in the transdisciplinary study of human cooperation" which outlines the conclusions of the working group; this paper will be submitted to a journal with a broad readership for maximum impact.