Evolutionary and Social Psychological Perspectives on Human Cooperation

Abstract

The interface of evolutionary and social psychological perspectives on human cooperation has provided the basis of a generative conundrum in science for decades. On the one hand, it is clear from both lay and scientific observation and experimentation that people (and many other species) are often very cooperative. For example, recent research suggests that the 'canonical model' of the purely self-interested human fails uniformly across cultures (Henrich et al. 2005; see also Caporael et al. 1989). On the other hand, this behavior is hard to square with the fact that cooperative choices almost always produce lesser outcomes for individuals, at least within a single encounter, and it is hard to imagine the adaptive advantages to such behaviors. The past 50 or so years have seen some resolution of the problem through conceptual and empirical progress, particularly thanks to notions of inclusive fitness and reciprocal altruism, which allow for concern beyond the self that can be advantageous over time. Further, the integration of evolutionary and psychological perspectives has provided useful explanations from different directions. The evolutionary explanations are often ultimate and examine how cooperative behavior could reflect advantageous strategy. The psychological perspective often seeks more proximate explanations for cooperative behavior, examining, for example, individual differences in cooperative tendencies and situational factors that influence cooperative behavior. Because these explanations are more proximate, they provide more specific answers to the question of why people cooperate. Combining the two perspectives, then, can provide a more complete answer lo why and under what circumstances people cooperate. And this is an important question as humanity approaches some of the most complex collective dilemmas it has ever faced in the forms of ever greater global interdependence, resource depletion, continued population growth, and climate change. Recently, an entire volume has been dedicated to the subject of human cooperation, and within it entire chapters were dedicated to evolutionary and psychological perspectives in turn (Van Lange et al. 2014). The more circumscribed goal of this chapter is to note some major themes across these perspectives and point to potential areas of integration in the pursuit of understanding human cooperation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)