Collins Conference Room
Seminar
  US Mountain Time

Our campus is closed to the public for this event.

Jessie Barker (University of Arizona)

Abstract.  Cooperation among people across societies is required to solve our most pressing social and environmental problems. Insights from evolutionary biology are already being used to promote cooperative behavior in contexts such as online social networks. Building on such efforts necessitates a deeper understanding of the ways in which people respond to opportunities for competition when making decisions about how much to cooperate. I have examined in a series of studies how different types of competition affect the balance between cooperation and conflict in human groups. While local competition with close neighbors and the ability to monopolize cooperatively-produced group resources result in lower cooperative contributions and even investments in harming others, leveling mechanisms and “competitive altruism” resulting from partner choice can help to promote cooperative behavior. This is the case not only when people play abstract laboratory economic games, but also in real-life contexts such as donating to a conservation charity. These studies demonstrate that competition affects cooperative behavior in a variety of ways, and that taking an evolutionary perspective not only allows us to identify rigorously the complex effects of competition on cooperation, but also to harness them to solve issues that depend on coordinated cooperative action. 

Purpose: 
Research Collaboration
SFI Host: 
Caitlin Stern

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