Projects per year
Abstract
Cooperation often comes with the temptation to defect and benefit at the cost of others. This tension between cooperation and defection is best captured in social dilemmas like the Prisoner's Dilemma. Adult humans have specific strategies to maintain cooperation during Prisoner's Dilemma interactions. Yet, little is known about the ontogenetic and phylogenetic origins of human decision-making strategies in conflict scenarios. To shed light on this question, we compared the strategies used by chimpanzees and 5-year old children to overcome a social dilemma. In our task, waiting for the partner to act first produced the best results for the subject. Alternatively, they could mutually cooperate and divide the rewards. Our findings indicate that the two species differed substantially in their strategies to solve the task. Chimpanzees became more strategic across the study period by waiting longer to act in the social dilemma. Children developed a more efficient strategy of taking turns to reciprocate their rewards. Moreover, children used specific types of communication to coordinate with their partners. These results suggest that while both species behaved strategically to overcome a conflict situation, only children engaged in active cooperation to solve a social dilemma.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 46-54 |
Journal | Evolution and Human Behavior |
Volume | 40 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 4 Aug 2018 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jan 2019 |
Keywords
- Social dilemma
- Prisoner's Dilemma
- Cooperation
- Coordination
- Chimpanzees
- Chidren
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Chimpanzees and children avoid mutual defection in a social dilemma'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
-
Josep Call: Constructing Social Minds: Coordination, Communication and Cultural Transmission
Call, J. (PI)
1/01/15 → 31/12/20
Project: Standard