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Long-term evidence on cooperation and cultural differences in public goods dilemmas.

ABSTRACT: It is hard to isolate human cooperation features outside the prevalent experimental laboratory context in a controlled setting. Since cooperation rates are very context-sensitive, a new setting-a public goods game in an online game-is analysed. This unique dataset addresses multiple critical issues: it is more realistic, individuals have an intrinsic motivation to play, there are no observer effects, and data are available for more than 18 000 individuals playing over 10 months. Participants come from 10 countries, which allows us to test for cultural influences on cooperation. We find small differences in cooperation rates between countries, ranging from 8.5% (Argentina) to 14.1% (Greece). Moreover, cooperation remains stable over long periods of time. Different cultural, economic and religious backgrounds do not seem to have a discernible influence on cooperation rates. Instead, individual differences seem to play a larger role. Finally, cooperation levels may be lower than suggested by experiments from the classical laboratory context.

SUBMITTER: Frey UJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6501364 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Long-term evidence on cooperation and cultural differences in public goods dilemmas.

Frey Ulrich J UJ

Biology letters 20190401 4

It is hard to isolate human cooperation features outside the prevalent experimental laboratory context in a controlled setting. Since cooperation rates are very context-sensitive, a new setting-a public goods game in an online game-is analysed. This unique dataset addresses multiple critical issues: it is more realistic, individuals have an intrinsic motivation to play, there are no observer effects, and data are available for more than 18 000 individuals playing over 10 months. Participants com ...[more]

PMID: 31014192

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Project description:From the microscopic to the macroscopic level, biological life exhibits directed migration in response to environmental conditions. Chemotaxis enables microbes to sense and move towards nutrient-rich regions or to avoid toxic ones. Socio-economic factors drive human populations from rural to urban areas. The effect of collective movement is especially significant when triggered in response to the generation of public goods. Microbial communities can, for instance, alter their environment through the secretion of extracellular substances. Some substances provide antibiotic-resistance, others provide access to nutrients or promote motility. However, in all cases the maintenance of public goods requires costly cooperation and is consequently susceptible to exploitation. The threat of exploitation becomes even more acute with motile individuals because defectors can avoid the consequences of their cheating. Here, we propose a model to investigate the effects of targeted migration and analyze the interplay between social conflicts and migration in ecological public goods. In particular, individuals can locate attractive regions by moving towards higher cooperator densities or avoid unattractive regions by moving away from defectors. Both migration patterns not only shape an individual's immediate environment but also affects the entire population. For example, defectors hunting cooperators have a homogenizing effect on population densities. This limits the production of the public good and hence inhibits the growth of the population. In contrast, aggregating cooperators promote the spontaneous formation of patterns through heterogeneous density distributions. The positive feedback between cooperator aggregation and public goods production, however, poses analytical and numerical challenges due to its tendency to develop discontinuous distributions. Thus, different modes of directed migration bear the potential to enhance or inhibit the emergence of complex and sometimes dynamic spatial arrangements. Interestingly, whenever patterns emerge, cooperation is promoted, on average, population densities rise, and the risk of extinction is reduced.

Dataset Information

Long-term evidence on cooperation and cultural differences in public goods dilemmas.

Publications

Long-term evidence on cooperation and cultural differences in public goods dilemmas.

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