Linked Life Data

16753564

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/16753564

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
11
pubmed:dateCreated
2006-6-6
pubmed:abstractText
Explaining cooperation is one of the greatest challenges for evolutionary biology. It is particularly a problem in species such as humans, where there is cooperation between nonrelatives. Numerous possible solutions have been suggested for the problem of cooperation between nonrelatives, including punishment, policing, and various forms of reciprocity. Here, we suggest that local competition for resources can pose a problem for these hypotheses, analogous to how it can select against cooperation between relatives. We extend the prisoner's dilemma (PD) game to show that local competition between interacting individuals can reduce selection for cooperation between nonrelatives. This is because, with local competition, fitness is relative to social partners, and cooperation benefits social partners. We then test whether nonrelated humans adjust their level of cooperation facultatively in response to the scale of competition when playing the PD for cash prizes. As predicted, we found that individuals were less likely to cooperate when competition was relatively local. Cooperation between humans will therefore be most likely when repeated interactions take place on a local scale between small numbers of people, and competition for resources takes place on a more global scale among large numbers of people.
pubmed:commentsCorrections
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Jun
pubmed:issn
0960-9822
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:day
6
pubmed:volume
16
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
1103-6
pubmed:dateRevised
2006-11-15
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2006
pubmed:articleTitle
Cooperation and the scale of competition in humans.
pubmed:affiliation
Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JT, United Kingdom. stu.west@ed.ac.uk
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't