Chapter 9: Cooperative Alliances Flashcards
Theory of reciprocal altruism
adaptations for providing benefits to nonrelatives can evolve as long as the delivery of benefits is reciprocated at some point
what is “gains in trade”?
when each party receives more in return than it costs to deliver the benefit
ex/ if a hunter catches a big game and the other doesn’t get any. He can share with the other hunter’s family. If he chooses to not share at all, he would not only harm the relationship between teh hunters, but his own family woudn’t be able to eat all the meat before it went bad anyways, so it would be a waste
what hypothetical dilemma illustrates the problem of reciprocal altruism?
the prisoners dilemma. see page 258
What must occur in a game setting in order for cooperation to occur?
the game must be played multiple rounds with no indication of when the game actually ends, like in life.
what is the winning strategy for the iterated prisoners dilemma? (game that keeps going)
tit for tat. Continue to work with the other person until someone cheats, then cheat back, but if they try and reestablish the relationship, help them out agian.
2 simple rules to tit for tat
1) cooperate on the first move
2) reciprocate on every move thereafter
3 features to continue tit for tat
1) never be the first to defect (cheat
2) retaliate only after the other had defected
3) be forgiving
5 strategies for promoting cooperation
1) enlarge the shadow of your future together: people are more likely to cooperate if they think you’re going to be in their life
2) teach reciprocity: convey the idea that you guys should work together and that you’re willing to give
3) insist on no more than equity: greed is the downfall of many relationships
4) respond quickly to provocation: signal that you will not tolerate being exploited
5) cultivate the reputation as a reciprocator: other people will try and build relationships with you. a reputation as an exploiter will lead to social shunning.
Explain cooperation in vampire bats
they share food when another bad was not able to get a meal.
Bats will regurgitate some of their harvested blood for others who have fed them before. They are also more likely to share their blood if their friend is in dire need (near starvation)
the possibility of ____ poses an ever present threat to the evolution of cooperation
cheating
Reciprocal altruism can only evolve if organisms have a mechanism for detecting and avoiding ___
cheaters
5 cognitive capacities necessary to avoid cheaters (the SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY)
1) the ability to recognize many different individual humans. Recognize who is trustworthy and who has cheated before.
2) The ability to remember histories of interactions with different individuals.
- need to keep track who owes what to who, need to know who cooperated before and who cheated
3) the ability to communicate one’s values to others.
- communicate what you want and what you expect.
4) the ability to model the values of others
5) the ability to represent costs and benefits independent of the particular items exchanged
- what is worth what
People who suffer ___ are more likely to be cheated. Why?
prosopagnosia. They cannot recognize faces and thus they cannot identify people.
Who proposed the social contract theory
Cosmides and Tooby
What is “logic”?
the inferences on can make about the truth of one statement from the truth of other statements, independent of their context.
Cosmides and Tooby (founders of social contract theory) proposes that people have not evolved to respond to abstract logical problems. They have evolved however to respond to problems that:
are structure as SOCIAL EXCHANGES when they are presented in terms of COSTS and BENEFITS.
Which parts of the brain were determined to be a part of the cheater detection machinery?
the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala.
People with damage to this region could solve logical problems but not social exchange/contract problems.
proof that people may remember cheaters better than non cheaters
people showed excellent face recognition for nonaltruists in experimental game settings.
People also show an automatic attentional bias toward the faces of people who had previously failed to cooperate during a prisoner’s dilemma game.
facial expressions of ____ predict subsequent cooperation in a prisoner’s dilemma game, whereas facial expressions of ____ predict non cooperation.
facial expressions of EJOYMENT predict subsequent cooperation in a prisoner’s dilemma game, whereas facial expressions of CONTEMPT predict non cooperation.
what has happened to cheating methods as a result of humans evolving a cheater-detection mechanism? What has resulted from the change in cheating methods?
cheating has evolved to be more sneaky because we have evolved a mechanism to detect it. As a result, we have also evolved a genuineness-detection theory.
