A study on community expectation for cooperative behaviour among locals and migrants: a case study of an Okinawan village, Japan

Despite the increasing need for local and migrant populations to cooperate in natural resource governance, little attention has been paid to community contexts that influence individual cooperative behavioural choices among them. The present study demonstrates this influence through quantitative and qualitative data obtained in Shiraho village, Okinawa, Japan. Externalised cooperative behaviour was significantly different between locals and migrants, and the residents’ location in the social network was related to the level of cooperation, even though they had similar individual cooperative preferences. We find that people with dense social ties participate in community cooperation more than others, and that residents practise their cooperative behaviour in a way that fits community expectations: which was influenced by age and birth origin. Understanding the social context that guides individual behaviour for natural resource governance in a time when residential fluidity may keep increasing has relevance to other communities.

Belief, Belonging, or Both? The Interaction Between Supernatural Belief and Identity Fusion, and their Influence on Cooperative Behaviour

<p>Research within the psychology of religion has illustrated the importance of both religious belief and religious belonging for facilitating cooperative behaviour. Specifically, the supernatural punishment hypothesis (Johnson, 2016; Johnson & Krüger, 2004) and identity fusion (Swann et al., 2009; Whitehouse, 2018) discuss belief and belonging, respectively. This thesis examines the connection of these two areas, with a focus on the understudied religious concept of karma. In Study 1, 193 participants took part in an online questionnaire, with a five-condition between subjects design, that investigated the content of religious belief by using karma and god related religious priming stimuli (images and vignettes) to influence individual’s belief. None of the four experimental conditions were found to change responses on belief in supernatural agents or karma. Belief in god/karma was associated with endorsement of both a punitive and benevolent god/karma. However, when both endorsements were included in the model, only benevolent endorsement was significant. In Study 2, 402 participants took part in a three-condition mixed-methods design with six repeated trials of a voluntary contribution task, which investigated how karma and god related religious priming stimuli (vignettes) influenced cooperative behaviour. Mixed methods analysis revealed that those in the karma condition had higher cooperative tendencies than those in the neutral condition, but did not differ from the god condition. Belief in supernatural agents did not affect how individuals were affected by the god condition. However, those with higher belief in supernatural agents and higher identity fusion were the least cooperative within the karma condition. Contrary to what was predicted, increased belief in karma predicted un-cooperative behaviour in the karma condition. These and other important findings are discussed with focus on the New Zealand context and how the findings from this thesis contributes to the supernatural punishment and identity fusion literature, by highlighting implications, limitations, and areas of focus for future research.</p>

Belief, Belonging, or Both? The Interaction Between Supernatural Belief and Identity Fusion, and their Influence on Cooperative Behaviour

<p>Research within the psychology of religion has illustrated the importance of both religious belief and religious belonging for facilitating cooperative behaviour. Specifically, the supernatural punishment hypothesis (Johnson, 2016; Johnson & Krüger, 2004) and identity fusion (Swann et al., 2009; Whitehouse, 2018) discuss belief and belonging, respectively. This thesis examines the connection of these two areas, with a focus on the understudied religious concept of karma. In Study 1, 193 participants took part in an online questionnaire, with a five-condition between subjects design, that investigated the content of religious belief by using karma and god related religious priming stimuli (images and vignettes) to influence individual’s belief. None of the four experimental conditions were found to change responses on belief in supernatural agents or karma. Belief in god/karma was associated with endorsement of both a punitive and benevolent god/karma. However, when both endorsements were included in the model, only benevolent endorsement was significant. In Study 2, 402 participants took part in a three-condition mixed-methods design with six repeated trials of a voluntary contribution task, which investigated how karma and god related religious priming stimuli (vignettes) influenced cooperative behaviour. Mixed methods analysis revealed that those in the karma condition had higher cooperative tendencies than those in the neutral condition, but did not differ from the god condition. Belief in supernatural agents did not affect how individuals were affected by the god condition. However, those with higher belief in supernatural agents and higher identity fusion were the least cooperative within the karma condition. Contrary to what was predicted, increased belief in karma predicted un-cooperative behaviour in the karma condition. These and other important findings are discussed with focus on the New Zealand context and how the findings from this thesis contributes to the supernatural punishment and identity fusion literature, by highlighting implications, limitations, and areas of focus for future research.</p>

Social Learning Strategies and Cooperative Behaviour: Evidence of Payoff Bias, but Not Prestige or Conformity, in a Social Dilemma Game

Human cooperation, occurring without reciprocation and between unrelated individuals in large populations, represents an evolutionary puzzle. One potential explanation is that cooperative behaviour may be transmitted between individuals via social learning. Using an online social dilemma experiment, we find evidence that participants’ contributions were more consistent with payoff-biased transmission than prestige-biased transmission or conformity. We also found some evidence for lower cooperation (i) when exposed to social information about peer cooperation levels than without such information, and (ii) in the prisoners’ dilemma game compared to the snowdrift game. A simulation model established that the observed cooperation was more likely to be caused by participants’ general propensity to cooperate than by the effect of social learning strategies employed within the experiment, but that this cooperative propensity could be reduced through selection. Overall, our results support previous experimental evidence indicating the role of payoff-biased transmission in explaining cooperative behaviour, but we find that this effect was small and was overwhelmed by participants’ general propensity for cooperation.

The red-beard evolutionary explanation of human sociality

Recent evolutionary studies on cooperation devote specific attention to non-verbal expressions of emotions. In this paper, I examine Robert Frank’s popular attempt to explain emotions, non-verbal markers and social behaviours. Following this line of work, I focus on the green-beard explanation of social behaviours. In response to the criticisms raised against this controversial ultimate explanation, based on resources found in Frank’s work, I propose an alternative red-beard explanation of human sociality. The red-beard explanation explains the emergence and evolution of emotions, a proximate cause, rather than patterns of behaviour. In contrast to simple evolutionary models that invoke a green-beard mechanism, I demonstrate that the red-beard explanation can be evolutionary stable. Social emotions are a common cause of a social behaviour and a phenotypic marker and therefore cooperative behaviour cannot be suppressed without also changing the marker.

The effects of reputation on inequality in network cooperation games

In the last several decades, ample evidence from across evolutionary biology, behavioural economics and econophysics has solidified our knowledge that reputation can promote cooperation across different contexts and environments. Higher levels of cooperation entail higher final payoffs on average, but how are these payoffs distributed among individuals? This study investigates how public and objective reputational information affects payoff inequality in repeated social dilemma interactions in large groups. I consider two aspects of inequality: excessive dispersion of final payoffs and diminished correspondence between final payoff and cooperative behaviour. I use a simple heuristics-based agent model to demonstrate that reputational information does not always increase the dispersion of final payoffs in strategically updated networks, and actually decreases it in randomly rewired networks. More importantly, reputational information almost always improves the correspondence between final payoffs and cooperative behaviour. I analyse empirical data from nine experiments of the repeated Trust, Helping, Prisoner's Dilemma and Public Good games in networks of ten or more individuals to provide partial support for the predictions. Our research suggests that reputational information not only improves cooperation but may also reduce inequality. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling'.

Gender Differences in Cooperative Environments?

This paper uses data on bill cosponsorship in the U.S. House of Representatives to estimate gender differences in cooperative behaviour. We find that among Democrats there is no significant gender gap in the number of cosponsors recruited, but women-sponsored bills tend to have fewer cosponsors from the opposite party. On the other hand, we find robust evidence that Republican women recruit more cosponsors and attract more bipartisan support on the bills that they sponsor. We interpret these results as evidence that cooperation is mostly driven by a commonality of interest, rather than gender per se.

The Role of Personality Traits, Cooperative Behaviour and Trust in Governments on the Brexit Referendum Outcome

We analyse the role of personality traits along with individuals’ cooperative behaviour, level of trust in the UK government and the European Council (EC, the body that defines the European Union’s overall political direction and priorities) and socio-demographics on UK citizens’ voting choices on the 2016 Brexit referendum. We use data from a survey conducted in April 2019 on 530 UK citizens who voted in the 2016 Brexit referendum. We use a Probit model to investigate what role voters’ personality traits, their trust in government institutions, their level of cooperative behaviour and socio-demographics played in the way they voted. We find voters’ choice was associated voters’ personality traits. In particular, voters associated with being extraverted, acting with self-confidence and outspokenness (i.e., agency), and voters’ closeness to experience, to forming part of a diverse community and the exchange of ideas and experiences were found to be associated with voting for Brexit in the 2016 referendum. We found that voters’ willingness to cooperate with others was associated with being less likely to vote for Brexit. In addition, voters who trusted the UK government were more likely to vote for Brexit, whereas voters trusting the EC were more likely to vote for the UK to stay in the EU. We also found that voters with relatively high level of education were less likely to vote for Brexit and voters not seeking jobs were more likely to vote for Brexit than students, unemployed and retired. We conclude that incorporating personality profiles of voters, their pro-social behaviour as well as their views on trust in politicians/government institutions, along with socio-demographic variables, into individuals’ vote choice analysis can account for voter heterogeneity and provide a more complete picture of an individual’s vote choice decisions, helping to gain a better understanding of individual vote choices (e.g., better predictions of future individual vote intentions).