Reciprocity creates a stake in one's partner, or why you should cooperate even when anonymous.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Barclay P
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7329032 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Cooperation by generalised reciprocity implies that individuals apply the decision rule "help anyone if helped by someone". This mechanism has been shown to generate evolutionarily stable levels of cooperation, but as yet it is unclear how widely this cooperation mechanism is applied among animals. Dogs (Canis familiaris) are highly social animals with considerable cognitive potential and the ability to differentiate between individual social partners. But although dogs can solve complex problems, they may use simple rules for behavioural decisions. Here we show that dogs trained in an instrumental cooperative task to provide food to a social partner help conspecifics more often after receiving help from a dog before. Remarkably, in so doing they show no distinction between partners that had helped them before and completely unfamiliar conspecifics. Apparently, dogs use the simple decision rule characterizing generalised reciprocity, although they are probably capable of using the more complex decision rule of direct reciprocity: "help someone who has helped you". However, generalized reciprocity involves lower information processing costs and is therefore a cheaper cooperation strategy. Our results imply that generalised reciprocity might be applied more commonly than direct reciprocity also in other mutually cooperating animals.
| S-EPMC5338352 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Many studies demonstrate that partner choice has played an important role in the evolution of human cooperation, but little work has tested its impact on the evolution of human fairness. In experiments involving divisions of money, people become either over-generous or over-selfish when they are in competition to be chosen as cooperative partners. Hence, it is difficult to see how partner choice could result in the evolution of fair, equal divisions. Here, we show that this puzzle can be solved if we consider the outside options on which partner choice operates. We conduct a behavioural experiment, run agent-based simulations and analyse a game-theoretic model to understand how outside options affect partner choice and fairness. All support the conclusion that partner choice leads to fairness only when individuals have equal outside options. We discuss how this condition has been met in our evolutionary history, and the implications of these findings for our understanding of other aspects of fairness less specific than preferences for equal divisions of resources.
| S-EPMC4455807 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Healthy social relationships are linked to myriad positive physical and mental health outcomes, raising the question of how to enhance relationship formation and quality. Behavioral data suggest that theory of mind (ToM) may be one such process. ToM is supported by a network of brain regions including the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), medial prefrontal cortex and precuneus (PC). However, little research has investigated how the ToM network supports healthy social relationships. Here, we investigate whether recruitment of the ToM network when thinking about the mental states of one's romantic partner predicts the partner's well-being. We find that selectivity in left TPJ (LTPJ) and PC for beliefs vs physical attributes of one's partner is positively associated with partner well-being the day of and day after a meaningful encounter. Furthermore, LTPJ and PC selectivity moderated how the partner's perception of being understood during the encounter affected their later well-being. Finally, we find the association between ToM-related neural selectivity and well-being robust to other factors related to the relationship and the encounter. Together, these data suggest that selective engagement of the neural network supporting ToM may be a key ingredient for the development and maintenance of healthy romantic relationships.
| S-EPMC4814790 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe republic of Benin ranks in the bottom third of countries recently assessed for ANC coverage and its Ministry of Family and National Solidarity (2009) reported close to 70% of Beninese women suffered abuse at least once in their lifetime. Utilization of antenatal care (ANC) services is key to positive health outcomes for both mother and infant. This study examined the impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) on the utilization of ANC services in Benin using both the basic 4 visit model (ANC-4) and the updated WHO recommended 8-visit model (ANC-8).MethodsData used for this study were collected from the nationally representative 2017-2018 Benin Demographic Health Survey (BDHS) on ever-partnered women aged 15-49 who had completed both reproductive maternal health and domestic violence modules of the survey. Descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression analysis were performed to determine significant factors associated with ANC utilization in Benin.ResultsOver 40% of the women (n = 3084) reported experience of IPV in their lifetime. Findings revealed that women who ever experienced IPV (OR 0.753, 95% CI: 0.628-0.901; p = 0.002) had 25% less odds of accessing the basic four ANC visits. IPV was not found to be a factor in accessing at least eight ANC visits. With increasing number of children, there was less likelihood of accessing at least four and at least eight visits. Being in the richest quintile (OR 5.490, 95% CI 3.907-7.714; p < 0.000 for ANC-4; OR, 5.781, 95% CI: 3.208-10.41; p < 0.000), making decisions on household and health care (OR 1.279, 95% CI: 1.042-1.569 for ANC-4; OR, 1.724; 95% CI: 1.170-2.540; p = 0.006 for ANC-8), and getting paid cash for work increased the chances of utilizing ANC-four (OR 1.451, 95% CI: 1.122-1.876; 0.005) but not for ANC-eight. Belonging to the Muslim faith decreased the odds of ANC utilization compared to all other religions.ConclusionThis work revealed key areas for maternal health policy makers and service providers in Benin to appropriately plan effective policies (i.e., alleviate poverty; equitable health services access; cultural sensitivity) and necessary interventions (i.e. ANC education, IPV prevention, paid employment, alcohol cessation) to increase utilization of ANC.
| S-EPMC8085473 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Interventions for ending intimate partner violence (IPV) have not usually provided integrated approaches. Legal and social policies have the duty to protect, assist and empower women and to bring offenders to justice. Men have mainly been considered in their role as perpetrators to be subjected to judicial measures, while child witnesses of violence have not been viewed as a direct target for services. Currently, there is a need for an integrated and holistic theoretical and operational model to understand IPV as gender-based violence and to intervene with the goal of ending the fragmentation of existing measures. The EU project ViDaCS-Violent Dads in Child Shoes-which worked towards the deconstruction and reconstruction of violence's effects on child witnesses, has given us the opportunity to collect the opinions of social workers and child witnesses regarding violence. Therefore, the article describes measures to deal with IPV, proposing functional connections among different services and specific preventative initiatives. Subsequently, this study will examine intimate partner violence and provide special consideration to interventions at the individual, relational, organizational and community levels. The final goal will be to present a short set of guidelines that take into account the four levels considered by operationalizing the aforementioned ecological principles.
| S-EPMC6539536 | biostudies-other
Project description:Cooperation based on mutual investments can occur between unrelated individuals when they are engaged in repeated interactions. Individuals then need to use a conditional strategy to deter their interaction partners from defecting. Responding to defection such that the future payoff of a defector is reduced relative to cooperating with it is called a partner control mechanism. Three main partner control mechanisms are (i) to switch from cooperation to defection when being defected ('positive reciprocity'), (ii) to actively reduce the payoff of a defecting partner ('punishment'), or (iii) to stop interacting and switch partner ('partner switching'). However, such mechanisms to stabilize cooperation are often studied in isolation from each other. In order to better understand the conditions under which each partner control mechanism tends to be favoured by selection, we here analyse by way of individual-based simulations the coevolution between positive reciprocity, punishment, and partner switching. We show that random interactions in an unstructured population and a high number of rounds increase the likelihood that selection favours partner switching. In contrast, interactions localized in small groups (without genetic structure) increase the likelihood that selection favours punishment and/or positive reciprocity. This study thus highlights the importance of comparing different control mechanisms for cooperation under different conditions.
| S-EPMC4920317 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Since M. A. Nowak & R. May's (1992) influential paper, limiting each agent's interactions to a few neighbors in a network of contacts has been proposed as the simplest mechanism to support the evolution of cooperation in biological and socio-economic systems. The network allows cooperative agents to self-assort into clusters, within which they reciprocate cooperation. This (induced) network reciprocity has been observed in several theoreticalmodels and shown to predict the fixation of cooperation under a simple rule: the benefit produced by an act of cooperation must outweigh the cost of cooperating with all neighbors. However, the experimental evidence among humans is controversial: though the rule seems to be confirmed, the underlying modeling assumptions are not. Specifically, models assume that agents update their strategies by imitating better performing neighbors, even though imitation lacks rationality when interactions are far from all-to-all. Indeed, imitation did not emerge in experiments. What did emerge is that humans are conditioned by their own mood and that, when in a cooperative mood, they reciprocate cooperation. To help resolve the controversy, we design a model in which we rationally confront the two main behaviors emerging from experiments-reciprocal cooperation and unconditional defection-in a networked prisoner's dilemma. Rationality is introduced by means of a predictive rule for strategy update and is bounded by the assumed model society. We show that both reciprocity and a multi-step predictive horizon are necessary to stabilize cooperation, and sufficient for its fixation, provided the game benefit-to-cost ratio is larger than a measure of network connectivity. We hence rediscover the rule of network reciprocity, underpinned however by a different evolutionary mechanism.
| S-EPMC6443768 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Prosocial behavior is paradoxical because it often entails a cost to one's own welfare to benefit others. Theoretical models suggest that prosociality is driven by several forms of reciprocity. Although we know a great deal about how each of these forms operates in isolation, they are rarely isolated in the real world. Rather, the topological features of human social networks are such that people are often confronted with multiple types of reciprocity simultaneously. Does our current understanding of human prosociality break down if we account for the fact that the various forms of reciprocity tend to co-occur in nature? Results of a large experiment show that each basis of human reciprocity is remarkably robust to the presence of other bases. This lends strong support to existing models of prosociality and puts theory and research on firmer ground in explaining the high levels of prosociality observed in human social networks.
| S-EPMC7269653 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
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Project description:Discovering new bacterial signaling pathways offers unique antibiotic strategies. Here, through an unbiased resistance screen of 3,884 gene knockout strains, we uncovered a previously unknown non-lytic bactericidal mechanism that sequentially couples three transporters and downstream transcription to lethally suppress respiration of the highly virulent P. aeruginosa strain PA14 - one of three species on the WHO's 'Priority 1: Critical' list. By targeting outer membrane YaiW, cationic lacritin peptide 'N-104' translocates into the periplasm where it ligates outer loops 4 and 2 respectively of the inner membrane transporters FeoB and PotH to respectively suppress both ferrous iron and polyamine uptake. This broadly shuts down transcription of many biofilm-associated genes, including ferrous iron-dependent TauD and ExB1. The mechanism is innate to the surface of the eye enhanced by synergistic coupling with thrombin peptide GKY20. This is the first example of an inhibitor of multiple bacterial transporters.
2024-01-16 | GSE253123 | GEO