scholarly journals Motivations to reciprocate cooperation and punish defection are calibrated by estimates of how easily others can switch partners

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sakura Arai ◽  
John Tooby ◽  
Leda Cosmides

Evolutionary models of dyadic cooperation demonstrate that selection favors different strategies for reciprocity depending on opportunities to choose alternative partners. We propose that selection has favored mechanisms that estimate the extent to which others can switch partners and calibrate motivations to reciprocate and punish accordingly. These estimates should reflect default assumptions about relational mobility: the probability that individuals in one’s social world will have the opportunity to form relationships with new partners. This prior probability can be updated by cues present in the immediate situation one is facing. The resulting estimate of a partner’s outside options should serve as input to motivational systems regulating reciprocity: Higher estimates should down-regulate the use of sanctions to prevent defection by a current partner, and up-regulate efforts to attract better cooperative partners by curating one’s own reputation and monitoring that of others. We tested this hypothesis using a Trust Game with Punishment (TGP), which provides continuous measures of reciprocity, defection, and punishment in response to defection. We measured each participant’s perception of relational mobility in their real-world social ecology and experimentally varied a cue to partner switching. Moreover, the study was conducted in the US (n = 519) and Japan (n = 520): societies that are high versus low in relational mobility. Across conditions and societies, higher perceptions of relational mobility were associated with increased reciprocity and decreased punishment: i.e., those who thought that others have many opportunities to find new partners reciprocated more and punished less. The situational cue to partner switching was detected, but relational mobility in one’s real social world regulated motivations to reciprocate and punish, even in the experimental setting. The current research provides evidence that motivational systems are designed to estimate varying degrees of partner choice in one’s social ecology and regulate reciprocal behaviors accordingly.

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
Vytis Čiubrinskas

The Centre of Social Anthropology (CSA) at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) in Kaunas has coordinated projects on this, including a current project on 'Retention of Lithuanian Identity under Conditions of Europeanisation and Globalisation: Patterns of Lithuanian-ness in Response to Identity Politics in Ireland, Norway, Spain, the UK and the US'. This has been designed as a multidisciplinary project. The actual expressions of identity politics of migrant, 'diasporic' or displaced identity of Lithuanian immigrants in their respective host country are being examined alongside with the national identity politics of those countries.


Author(s):  
Qunfeng Dong ◽  
Xiang Gao

Abstract Accurate estimations of the seroprevalence of antibodies to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 need to properly consider the specificity and sensitivity of the antibody tests. In addition, prior knowledge of the extent of viral infection in a population may also be important for adjusting the estimation of seroprevalence. For this purpose, we have developed a Bayesian approach that can incorporate the variabilities of specificity and sensitivity of the antibody tests, as well as the prior probability distribution of seroprevalence. We have demonstrated the utility of our approach by applying it to a recently published large-scale dataset from the US CDC, with our results providing entire probability distributions of seroprevalence instead of single-point estimates. Our Bayesian code is freely available at https://github.com/qunfengdong/AntibodyTest.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Heintz ◽  
Thom Scott-Phillips

Human expression is diverse and multi-faceted, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved function of which is the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how they are unleashed in humans. The relevant cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species’ social ecology that can explain how and why humans evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity in means and modes of expression. We make relevant cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only the evolution of languages, but novel behaviour in other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, punishment, and the arts. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of many of the most of the most distinctive features of human behaviour and societies.


Author(s):  
Robert Volpicelli

The coda to this book uses modernist authors’ diverse engagements with academic institutions on the US lecture tour as an opportunity to reconsider long-standing scholarly narratives about modernist institutionalization. In particular, it argues that the academic institution is not the closed, autonomous space that critics frequently make it out to be and that modernism’s relocation into the university during the postwar period should not be seen as a retreat from the social world. After highlighting several scenes from this book that reflect an alternative perspective on modernism’s relationship with the university, the coda makes a final call for us to model our contemporary institutions on the US lecture tour’s diverse social engagements as a way of furthering recent efforts in the public humanities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 462-474
Author(s):  
Ammara Maqsood

Abstract In the aftermath of 9/11, with respect to the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan have been the site of immense violence and destruction, including from US drone attacks, ground military operations by the Pakistan Army, and retaliatory attacks by different factions of Taliban fighters. Using uncertainty as an analytic and ethnographic concept, this article traces the social life of the rumors, conspiracy theories, and stories that float around this violence. It draws attention to their multiple and often contradictory effects: rumors simultaneously breed fear and confusion, help forge intimacy, and provide certainty and coherence. Rather than subvert power relations or simply critique the powerful, I suggest that rumors and conspiracy theories provide the means through which tribal Pashtuns live and make their way in a social world in which they remain unequal, but coeval, participants.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-44
Author(s):  
Cưong Anh Nguyen ◽  
Hien Thi Do ◽  
Cuong Dinh Nguyen

The article is based on recognized human rights standards, using concrete examples in real life, thus showing the actual picture of human rights in Vietnam today. Vietnam is willing to cooperate and strives to realize the values in the Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations in 1948 and other international conventions on human rights. It tries to answer questions about human rights in Vietnam: Why is the human rights situation in the country making much progress, although the US still regularly puts Vietnam on the list of countries particularly concerned about human rights? Most importantly, this colorful picture will delve into human rights values that Vietnamese people are enjoying. With vivid images, the article also points out the difficulties that Vietnamese people are going through to join the international community to be more aware of the human rights issues that they actively address.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tommaso Batistoni ◽  
Pat Barclay ◽  
Nichola Raihani

Third-party punishment has been hypothesised to act as an honest signal of cooperative intent. Previous theoretical and empirical work has shown that individuals might escalate signals of cooperative intent when there is competition to be chosen as a partner. Here, we investigate the hypothesis that competition to be chosen as a social partner leads to escalating investment in third-party punishment. In the same scenario, we also consider the case of signalling via helpful acts to provide a direct test of the relative strength of the two types of signals. Investments in third-party helping were higher than investments in third-party punishment – and also exhibited a more robust positive association with audience effects. We did not find a clear effect of partner choice (over and above simply being observed) on either punishment or helping investments. Third-parties who invested more in helping were preferred as partners and were sent more money in a subsequent trust game. Third-party punishers were slightly preferred as interaction partners but less so than third-party helpers. In addition, we found that the amount invested in third-party punishment or helping was a reliable indicator of the individual’s trustworthiness: those who invested more returned a higher proportion of any entrusted amount. Individuals who did not invest in third-party helping were more likely to be untrustworthy, but the same was not true for individuals who did not invest in third-party punishment. This supports the conception of help as a less ambiguous signal of cooperative intent.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1069031X2110366
Author(s):  
Stanford A. Westjohn ◽  
Peter Magnusson ◽  
George R. Franke ◽  
Yi Peng

Does collectivism influence an individual's willingness to trust others? Conflicting empirical results from past research and the role of trust in international marketing make this question important to resolve. We investigate this question across cultures and at the individual level with four studies using multiple methods. Study 1 establishes correlational evidence between societal-level collectivism and individual-level trust propensity with results from a multi-level analysis of data from over 6,000 respondents in 36 different countries. Study 2 offers an individual-level analysis using the trust game, introducing a more rigorous behavioral outcome variable. Study 3 contributes causal evidence at the individual level based on experiments in both the US and China and offers evidence of social projection as the explanatory mechanism. Finally, Study 4 demonstrates managerial relevance by using advertising to prime collectivism and assessing its effect on trust in the firm.


2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (7) ◽  
pp. 1101-1111 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. A. Glashouwer ◽  
P. J. de Jong

BackgroundCognitive theory points to the importance of negative self-schemas in the onset and maintenance of depression and anxiety disorders. Hereby, it is important to distinguish between automatic and explicit self-schemas, reflecting different cognitive-motivational systems. This study tested whether patients with a current major depression and/or anxiety disorder are characterized by automatic self-anxious and self-depressive associations and whether these associations are disorder specific.MethodPatients (n=2329) and non-clinical controls (n=652) were tested as part of The Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety, a multi-center, longitudinal, cohort study with patients from different health care settings. Patient groups and non-clinical controls (18–65 years of age) were compared with regard to automatic self-anxious and self-depressive associations measured with the Implicit Association Test.ResultsIndividuals with an anxiety disorder showed enhanced self-anxious associations, whereas individuals with a depression showed enhanced self-depressive associations. Individuals with co-morbid disorders scored high on both automatic self-associations. Although remitted individuals showed weaker automatic self-associations than people with a current disorder, their automatic self-anxious/depressed associations were still significantly stronger than those of the control group. Importantly, automatic self-associations showed predictive validity for the severity of anxious and depressive symptoms over and above explicit self-beliefs.ConclusionsThis study represents the first evidence that automatic self-anxious and self-depressive associations are differentially involved in anxiety disorders and depression. This may help to explain the refractoriness of these disorders and points to the potential importance of automatic self-associations in the development of psychopathological symptoms.


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