cooperation and conflict notes
See something occur in natural world - because that happens - therefore it is “good”
See this when talking about violence and war - that is just how it is because it has occurred for so long
Want to avoid that as much as possible
Social behavior - have to be very careful
What is typically does not determine what is right
“This behavior is natural therefore it is normal”
Our goal - not to condemn or praise - biological understanding doesn’t say what “should be”
Guard against assuming
Important point #2 - Evolution Matters - Don’t ignore species evolved characteristics
Being aware of naturalistic fallacy protects from incorrectly arguing biological basis for determining values
Must guara against assuming we can easily create any kind of moral system we want
Braind and culture are rooted in evolutionary history of our species
Avoid extrapolating assumptions from biology without context or understanding of the difference between natural world
Should use both biology and psychology to fully understand - need to be careful - not to justify violence
Important point #3 - motivational autonomy- biology determine what CAN be not what MUST be
Our species-typical brain and social structure provide building blocks
Come from social animals that worked and lived in groups
History provides building blocks of biology and psychology
Part of job - ask the question - what are the evolutionary building blocks, what is their function, how do they operate
Human social behavior - anger, trust, cooperation - very important - highly malleable
Not true of all of human biology or psychology
Don’t always have conscious control of everything - certain reflexes/instincts
Hardwiring - not malleable/changeable - very different to emotion system
Anger - as a social emotion - important component of cooperation
Shaped by natural selection when resources or status threatened by someone else - building block
Not everyone respond the way - quick to anger/slow to anger
Social rules around expressing anger differ cross culturally
Anger is a building block but not a hardwired reflex
Anger used by our cultural experiences
Deck of cards - 52 cards - randomly bring out a new suit - only 52 that is how it goes
That is how evolution - created deck of cards, anger, shame, guilt, trust - can’t decide to not have part of emotion system
Can create endless card games with 52 cards - how individuals and groups an use basic building blocks to determine cooperation and conflict - can basically do anything
Shaped by evolution but how they get modified - variable and changeable across time and culture
We should be skeptical about the inevitability of any kind of outcome or generalization (eg war is inevitable, people are fundamentally selfish)
No behavior is inevitable - it must occur
No human social behavior that we can observe - matches the reflex - always variability and proximal control over that
Biology doesn’t program u
Important point #4 - The social nature of our species is the key for cruelty and kindness
Human life is organized around groups
Without living in a group, ancestral human would quickly perish
Working with other people - how people survive
Still completely dependent on groups for survival and thriving
Trust - 330 million people - how do we as a massive group - how do we work together at a giant scale
Interpersonal level vs societal level - what are the consequences of living in a society where trust is breaking down
Heritage and current reality of human as group living primates is the single, simple, key to everything we are going to talk about in this class
Important point #5 - The Human brain’s capabilities reflect our evolution
Some key features
Rich emotion system with fast reaction to events
Slower conscious system that interprets and makes sense of our behavior
Cognitive and behavioral flexibility
Culture as as source of flexibility and variability in behavior
Culture and biology are not at odds - culture is a prime element of human evolution
Judge people based on how control emotions - also culture (homophobia, sexism, racism) who is allowed to express emotions
Culture deep part of biology -
Cultural practices - expression of genes
Can live within any ecosystem on the planet
Programmed to acquire language and culture but no specific one
Culture creating animals - have had culture long enough
Evolutionary pressures occurred within the context of human culture
Humans are Group- Living Primates
Part of large group of mammal - 400 - part of order - Primate
Common ancestor - 60 - 90 million years ago - from that all primates have evolved
Hominidae - split from other primates about 15 million years ago
Humans, chimps, gorillas, orangutans
Mammals and then primates and then this family group of species
Humans did not evolve from chimpanzees - cousins - have common ancestor but didn’t descend from them - in parallel with us - cousins related - have common ancestor
Chimps closest living relatives
Did not evolve from chimps
Fairly recent common ancestor lived about 7 million years ago
Two distinct species of chips with common ancestor - 1 - 2 million - similar appearance, different social behavior
Common chimp - violent
Bonobo - less violent, more affectionate, sexual behavior
Because of their recent ancestor - expect them to have similar social behavior - but it isn’t true
Common chimps
Higher levels of aggression
Stronger status competition within groups
Radically more violent behavior towards stranger chimps
Bonobos
Use less violent means of conflict management
Female leadership to a greater degree
Sexual behavior a key component of conflict behavior
Greater diversity of sexual behavior
Geographic Range of Bonobos Limited to the Democratic Republic of Congo
Limited by river - can’t get to each other
Closest non living relatives - neanderthals
They are more robust - larger bones
Homo sapiens closest non living relative - homo neanderthalensis
Common ancestor 500 - 800 thousand years ago
Neanderthals and biologically modern humans - overlapped for about 200k years
Geographic overlap
Went extinct 30k years ago - south of spain last known location - gibraltar
Used tools, buried dead, created art, spoken language
Worked in groups
Neanderthals bones - many broken bones, got a lot of calories through large game - got bad injuries from it, if you didn’t have someone take care of you - will die
Intensely social - behavioral sense - it is clear
Last 20 years of research
Archaic humans - coexisting, other closely related species
Neanderthals - europe in middle east
Other populations of archaic species in asia
Able to reconstitute genetic sequence - able to see intermixing across species
Interbreeding between populations
Ancestors and Their Ancestors - Hunter Gatherer
Small bands of people, many related
Low population density
Could be as low as 5k humans on planet
Low genetic variability between humans compared with other species - human genetic highly homogenous compared to other species - because we almost went extinct
Those who survived - founders of what we look like now
Scavenging as much or more than big game hunting
Adaptations for running - little hair - efficient heat regulation through sweating
Current hunter gatherer - walking/running gazelles or other animals to death (long distance, run all day, won’t overheat)
Key features of hunter gatherer culture
Big risks
Starvation
Predation from large carnivores
Get safety from tool use and teamwork
Most of time - little benefit from risk of violent conflict with other groups of humans
Changes when get settled over agriculture groups - fighting over land/resources/livestock
Cultural diversity between hunter gatherers - some more egalitarian some with more hierarchy
In general more egalitarian than agriculture
Men hunt in groups - real effort to share responsibility, success, hide who killed animal - not one ‘big man’
Some deal with violence, some just leave, would break apart, no need to fight over cattle, land, etc
Start to see ruler/alpha in agricultural societies
Avoiding ostracism - follow group, don’t anger others, be valued -want to be liked, want people to take care of you
Avoiding being taken advantage of - anger when others ‘cheat’, by not pulling weight or don’t return favors
Gaining status - but not induce envy
Be wary of strangers
Modern environments different than what our hunter ancestors
Agriculture began 10,000 years ago
Cities 5,000 years
Agriculture effects on human society
Less egalitarian - more concentration of wealth and power, increase in patriarchy
Less interpersonal violence, more intergroup violence
More interaction with strangers, trust based on abstract group membership, social control
Written language - requires learning (vs spoken language doesn’t require effort)
Evolution, Culture, Motivational Autonomy
Biological evolution had shaped basic building blocks of humans psychological capacity for social interaction
Theory of mind
Homo sapiens - largely biologically “set” for 10s of thousands of years
Species has undergone rapid cultural that shape HOW those evolved building block sa reuse
Biological determines what Cane Be not what Must Be (motivational autonomy)
Hunter gatherer to agriculture - wasn't because of genetic change
What Economic Games Tell us About the Underlying Building Blocks of Human Social Relations
Rational Choice Models of Human Behavior
Models developed in econ that assume human behavior is and should be “rational” and self interested/selfish
How well do these models of human behavior match reality
If there are deviations, do these result in “worse” outcomes?
Is rationality and self interest (in the narrow sense of models) optimal?
Rational choice theory - very clear about predictions
Psychology - theories and models of human behavior - fuzzy - can’t really be disproven
Rational choice theory - when it starts to fail - can learn something important - it does explain a lot of behavior - when it breaks down - learning something interesting about hwo human shaped by natural selection = engage in cooperation
RCT - assume that humans do things that benefit themselves
Describes one mode of human cooperation - but not necessarily all of it
Game Theory
How people should make decisions about interactions with others when they have minimal information
“Games” (tasks) - doesn’t mean game in usual way
Structure of game recreates (in a stripped down format) problems that people face in social interactions
Mimics the evolutionary contexts that shaped the building blocks of our psychology
Take out complexity of everyday life, people you know, barebones structure
Recreating core aspects of different challenges that ancestors faced
Key Examples of Experimental Games: Prisoner’s Dilemma Game
Two players, each of whom must make a choice of behavior
Know the options faced by the other player
Can’t communicate with them
Must make a choice in uncertainty - decide what to do - not knowing what the other person will do (vice versa)
Measures trust and assumptions about cooperation
Zero deception - everything told to participant - true, will tell you everything about task you will do
Told - another participant elsewhere in lab - will be your partner in game (never meet them)
Can’t communicate with them - trying to decide what to do
Prisoner’s Dilemma Trade-Offs… Using Money In Experiments
Player a - have to make choice on which row you will choose
Player b - choosing between column
If player a and b choose
Don’t know what the other player will choice
Two players
A.b
Each choice has to make a choice
X or y
Knowing that the other player is faced with this choice too
X - cooperative, trusting choice
Y - selfish, untrusting choice
Rational choice theory - choose y - protect self from downside - if you have irrational player b - could get 90
Y - dominant choice in game theory
Two rational players - end up with less if you were both irrational 40 and 40 vs 70 and 70
If both players ‘irrational’ - 70
Paradox - joint benefits highest - when both choose cooperative options - and they often do!
But always the temptation to exploit and the risk of exploitation
The story of human cooperation is how we both evolved biologically (evolve) and culturally (learn) to move to more stable and complex forms of trust and cooperation
More rounds of games - more cooperation (learn to trust?)
Trust Game – Willingness to Make Investment in Others
Similarities with prisoners dilemma
People given starting amount of money
Can transfer money to another person
“Truster” role
Money sent is tripled
Can send as much as you want, walk out of lab with 100
Send 50 to other player - other player will get 150 - that person has option to send money back to you
Receiver (trustee) can send portion back
How much would you send?
From point of RCT - they should keep all money
Most people send some money back - person who sent money - come out with as much as they started - person who received
Money is higher than if people followed rational choice theory
Dictator Game
Two participants, one given a pot of money and the right to distribute as she wishes
No communication, receiver gets whatever the giver decides, no repeated interaction
Rational narrow self interested response is to give zero to other person
Measures motivation for altruism and helping
RCT - thinks that you you will keep entire amount
Not harming them by not giving them any money
What do people actually do - most people send a little money
Send less in trust game (bc you know you will not get it back)
Assessing motivation for just helping with no return
Help to not feel bad - evolved mechanism - probably irrational - feeling bad if you don’t help - evolved mechanism in operation - designed to feel bad if others are in need
Mostly help when it is easy, when people you know, when cost is low
Ultimatum Game
Same structure as dictator game - except
Receiver can ‘veto’ the distribution in which case neither of them gets anything
Rational narrow self interested behavior is for givers to provide the smallest possible non zero mount and receivers to accept any non zero amount
Measures norms of sharing and fear of and willingness to engage in ‘costly punishment’ for ‘unfairness’
If you start receiving less - start veto deal - take money away
Is it rational to veto $1 - you’ve got money that you didn’t have before -
Costly punishment - give something up to punish someone else - people are very willing to do that
Most people that start with endowment - send very fair offers - usually 50/50 - no one will veto that deal - be sure you will walk out with money - safe option - won’t expect most of money
Retaliation and revenge play role in cooperation - when people exploit us - required for cooperation to evolve
Building Blocks of Human Groups and Relationships
We as social species - social cooperative rationality - prepared biologically to take the bet - might be to our benefit to trust and cooperate with other people
Biological and cultural evolution
Evolution, Culture, Motivational Autonomy
Biological evolution shaped the basic building block of human’ psychological capacity for social interaction
Language, emotion systems, theory of mind, relational models
Theory of mind - why are others intention, motivation, did they mean to hurt feelings
Relational model - social exchange with another person
What is guiding that interaction
Core building blocks - part of biology - how they are utilized - shaped
Evolved to have capacity for language - not a specific language
Homo sapiens - largely been biologically “set” for tens of thousands of years
Species has undergone rapid cultural changes that shape HOW those evolved building blocks are used
What is the “Grammar” of social relations
Parallel with language - universal grammar consists of atomic agrammatical cartoeis and relations that building blocks of the particular grammar of all human languages over which syntactic structures and constraints on those structures which are defined
Universal grammar would suggest that all language possesses the same set of categories and relations
Linguists, psychologists, neuroscientists continue to debate (intensely!!) what, exactly, are the building blocks of language
We know human capacity for language is “innate” – but the interplay of basic evolved building blocks and developmental processes is still a major scientific enterprise with many unknowns!
Relational models
Types of groups
Core moralities
Relational Models
Four core ways of managing interpersonal interacts
Communal sharing
Interaction in which needs and cost assigned to people are undifferentiated so that distinct individual identities are disregarded and commonalities are emphasized
Main motive - satisfying need
Must come to complete agreement for it to work - don’t use it so much for decision making
Other times - consensus important thing
Equality matching
Interaction in which there is tracking of exchange
Turn taking, one person-one vote
Main motive - balance
Market pricing
Interaction in which participants are each measuring and trying to maximize or optimize the value of exchange
Often but not always a monetary value
Goals are optimization and maximizing value
Authority ranking
Interaction in which participants are guided by hierarchical ranking to make division
Lower status duty to follow, higher status duty to protect
Relational Models Help Guide Interactions and also help form groups
Group - set of people that some kind of interaction and shared identity over time
Human life in ancestral environments
Famly
Band structure
Language groups
Temporary hunting or gathering groups
Modern environments have great diversity of groups – is there a taxonomy of different types of groups in people’s minds?
Varieties of groups
What is the everyday person’s intuitive understanding of different types of groups
Four types of group emerge again and again when we use different statistical methods and measures
Intimacy groups (family, friends, romantic relationships, tight knit groups - sports, military)
Task groups (employment groups, juries, volunteer groups)
Loose association (wide array of groups with more superficial or short lasting membership) - same plane, listening to orchestra - still rules of conduct, norms, social relationships, very temporary, very loose knit - still there - low threshold to be in a group together
Social categories (broad identities - race, religion, gender, nationality)
Have qualities of intimacy groups
People put a lot of weight onto identities
These type of identities less important to hunter gatherers
How permeable is the group - how easy to get in and out of
Intimacy groups - low in permeability, long in duration
What Differentiates these Groups
Four key underlying structural variable so groups are the “bones: underlying the taxonomy
Duration
Permeability
Size
Degree of interaction of communication amongst groups members
Different groups have
Different structural properties
Rely on a different mix of relational models
Authority ranking, communal sharing
Modern environments different than what hunter gatherers ancestors
Agriculture began 10,000 years ago
Cities - 5,000
Agriculture's effects on human society
Less egalitarian (more concentration of wealthy and power), increase in patriarchy
Less interpersonal violence, but more intergroup violence
More interaction with strangers, trust based on abstract group members, social control
What are some key changes that have occurred in human social structure
3 main changed
Broad social identities
Greater ease in creating groups and identities, not even requiring face to face interaction
Huge increases in thee extent
A huge increase in the extent to which the relational
principle of Market Pricing guides our behavior
• So much so that there has been debate about whether all
human “cooperation” is guided by this mindset (Rational
Choice Theory)
Ancestral and Current Environments and Societies
Our perceptions of fairness and trust are not just about interpersonal setting
Though this interpersonal setting is what our ancestors mostly experiences in their small and very egalitarian societies
To apply this idea of “core evolved building blocks” to the real world we have to look at distribution, fairness, and trust, at a societal level
Our societies are radically different in many ways than ancestral hunter gatherer societies
Studying Distribution of Income and Wealth
Recall the ultimatum game? Can you think about who that does and does not apply to your role in society as s whole
In what role are you
Do you have veto power
Wealth inequality has grown more drastic
Rich get richer, poor get poorer
Gini Index - overall measure of income inequality
Higher is more inequality
Wealth
Pew Analysis - Lower Income Households Wealth Peaked in 2001
Consequences of Economic Inequality – Research questions
How do people explain and perceive these changes?
What are the consequences of living in a society where stagnation or decline rather than growth is the norm for a large % of the population
Very important risk factor for social conflict
Impacts trust and perceptions of fairness
At high levels - is associated with lower economic growth
Negative mental health and health outcomes
Worse social mobility (raising your social class from that of your parents)
Higher inequality linked to lower social mobility
What do people want? Do we notice and dislike inequality?
This is new area of research, but studies have been building our knowledge
Example of this research, Kiatpongsan and Norton Pay Study
Asked people in different countries what their perceptions were of the pay of top corporate executives compared to regular workers
What should it be
What do you think it is
Ideal and Estimated Ratio of Worker to CEO pay
No one is saying that the gap and CEO should be bigger
It is more unequal than what people want it to be
US - average fortune 500 CEo earns 351 times the workers in those companies
People do see inequality more than they want, they are aware
Even larger than people are aware
Ultimatum game - right in your face - researchers just told us how much people are getting - not as clear in real life
Massively underestimate amount of inequality
Responses to Inequality
Data might be depressing
Few things in human social life are set in stone
Positive conflict, things that can end well
Oishi - Lower Happiness Correlated with High Inequality
General trust – happiness – perceived fairness – income inequality