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Social Norms of Cooperation in Small-Scale Societies.

ABSTRACT: Indirect reciprocity, besides providing a convenient framework to address the evolution of moral systems, offers a simple and plausible explanation for the prevalence of cooperation among unrelated individuals. By helping someone, an individual may increase her/his reputation, which may change the pre-disposition of others to help her/him in the future. This, however, depends on what is reckoned as a good or a bad action, i.e., on the adopted social norm responsible for raising or damaging a reputation. In particular, it remains an open question which social norms are able to foster cooperation in small-scale societies, while enduring the wide plethora of stochastic affects inherent to finite populations. Here we address this problem by studying the stochastic dynamics of cooperation under distinct social norms, showing that the leading norms capable of promoting cooperation depend on the community size. However, only a single norm systematically leads to the highest cooperative standards in small communities. That simple norm dictates that only whoever cooperates with good individuals, and defects against bad ones, deserves a good reputation, a pattern that proves robust to errors, mutations and variations in the intensity of selection.

SUBMITTER: Santos FP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4726523 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Social Norms of Cooperation in Small-Scale Societies.

Santos Fernando P FP Santos Francisco C FC Pacheco Jorge M JM

PLoS computational biology 20160125 1

Indirect reciprocity, besides providing a convenient framework to address the evolution of moral systems, offers a simple and plausible explanation for the prevalence of cooperation among unrelated individuals. By helping someone, an individual may increase her/his reputation, which may change the pre-disposition of others to help her/him in the future. This, however, depends on what is reckoned as a good or a bad action, i.e., on the adopted social norm responsible for raising or damaging a rep ...[more]

PMID: 26808261

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Project description:BackgroundHumans life histories have been described as "slow", patterned by slow growth, delayed maturity, and long life span. While it is known that human life history diverged from that of a recent common chimpanzee-human ancestor some ~4-8 mya, it is unclear how selection pressures led to these distinct traits. To provide insight, we compare wild chimpanzees and human subsistence societies in order to identify the age-specific vital rates that best explain fitness variation, selection pressures and species divergence.MethodsWe employ Life Table Response Experiments to quantify vital rate contributions to population growth rate differences. Although widespread in ecology, these methods have not been applied to human populations or to inform differences between humans and chimpanzees. We also estimate correlations between vital rate elasticities and life history traits to investigate differences in selection pressures and test several predictions based on life history theory.ResultsChimpanzees' earlier maturity and higher adult mortality drive species differences in population growth, whereas infant mortality and fertility variation explain differences between human populations. Human fitness is decoupled from longevity by postreproductive survival, while chimpanzees forfeit higher potential lifetime fertility due to adult mortality attrition. Infant survival is often lower among humans, but lost fitness is recouped via short birth spacing and high peak fertility, thereby reducing selection on infant survival. Lastly, longevity and delayed maturity reduce selection on child survival, but among humans, recruitment selection is unexpectedly highest in longer-lived populations, which are also faster-growing due to high fertility.ConclusionHumans differ from chimpanzees more because of delayed maturity and lower adult mortality than from differences in juvenile mortality or fertility. In both species, high child mortality reflects bet-hedging costs of quality/quantity tradeoffs borne by offspring, with high and variable child mortality likely regulating human population growth over evolutionary history. Positive correlations between survival and fertility among human subsistence populations leads to selection pressures in human subsistence societies that differ from those in modern populations undergoing demographic transition.

Dataset Information

Social Norms of Cooperation in Small-Scale Societies.

Publications

Social Norms of Cooperation in Small-Scale Societies.

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