What does it mean to cooperate? Expert and lay perspectives.

Abstract

Objective: 'Cooperation' is a construct for which there are a variety of definitions. This makes it a challenge to identify when cooperation has occurred and when somebody performed a behavior with cooperative intent. Complicating matters is that social and behavioral science experts tend to define cooperation in ways that differ from lay conceptions of the construct. The objective of this article is to review these definitions, contrast the expert and lay perspectives, and discuss how this difference presents problems for resolving real-world issues that require collective action. Method: Literature is selectively reviewed across psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology, environmental science, and medicine. The findings are used to analyze the global problems of climate change, contagious disease, and water conservation. Results: The expert view of cooperation is grounded in theory based on behavior patterns across individuals and suggests that cooperation results from some combination of evolved tendency, learned associations, social instigators, and physiological activity. By contrast, the lay view is driven by life experience and personal theory about human behavior. Conclusions: Whether a behavior is 'cooperative' will often be a function of who is evaluating it. This poses a challenge for the solution of chronic problems that require coordinated action. This is demonstrated through analysis of expert approaches to greenhouse gas emissions, vaccination, and reduction of water consumption that have each failed to resonate with the public. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)