The Behavioural Dimensions of International Cooperation

International cooperation to tackle complex common resource problems like climate change is extremely difficult. Although there is broad agreement on the nature of the problem and what is required to solve it, many nations continue to block any meaningful action for solution. This global cooperation crisis is baffling in the light of recent evidence about the surprisingly cooperative disposition of human beings. Research from social and natural sciences points to an unmistakable conclusion: people cooperate all the time, and they enjoy doing so. This picture of human behaviour is at odds with common assumptions about people being narrowly-and exclusively-self-interested, and prompts the question that we address in this paper: why, if we are so good cooperating at interpersonal levels, is international cooperation so hard? We address this question in three steps. First, we review the recent multidisciplinary evidence demonstrating that people cooperate much more than rational-theory models predict, and that this might stem from a natural, evolved, predisposition to cooperate. Second, we argue that there are seven basic mechanisms that determine whether or not cooperation is successful or sustainable: reciprocity, trust, communication, reputation, fairness, enforcement and we-identity. We group these mechanisms in a 'cooperation hexagon' that summarizes the current consensus about what makes cooperation work. Finally, we discuss what these findings mean for global cooperation. We argue that power games are not enough to explain off current international cooperation blockades. A new, comprehensive theory of international cooperation must be compatible with the recent insights about the fundamentally cooperative nature of human behaviour. We suggest that the search for this theory be made in three directions: a) establish how cooperation scales up from interpersonal to larger scales, and how the basic mechanisms of cooperation behave under conditions of unprecedented complexity and rapid change; b) investigate cooperation at the 'meso-level' of global governance-the relatively small group of people who represent nations in international discussions and institutions-a key interface between interpersonal and inter-institutional motivations for cooperation; and c) examine patterns of international cooperation in the light of the cooperation hexagon, to ascertain whether international cooperation blockades are the result of the underprovisioning of the basic mechanisms of cooperation, and how these mechanisms can be used as criteria for designing better institutions for global governance

Let’s Be Friends: Examining Consumer Brand Relationships Through the Lens Of Brand Personality, Engagement, and Reciprocal Altruism

Brands have always exuded personality and status to consumers in order to promote a competent impression and induce positive perceptions and behaviors (Griskevicius, et al., 2007). In order for individuals to identify with brands, the brands must become more personable by consciously embodying a specific personality trait. Research has found that when a brand embodies a personality, there is an associated increase in consumer preference and usage (Sirgy, 1982), purchase choices for that brand (Ha & Janda, 2014; Gordon et al., 2016; Guèvremont & Grohmann, 2013; Swaminathan et al., 2009), and consumer preference and brand loyalty (Louis & Lombart, 2010; Mengxia, 2007). The purpose of this study is threefold: first, to examine the relationship between each of Aaker’s (1997) brand personalities – competence, sincerity, excitement, sophistication, and ruggedness – and consumer engagement on social media; second, to explore for the first time brand-consumer reciprocal altruism and its relationship with engagement; and third, to investigate whether reciprocal altruism is related to greater engagement from consumers following the brand on social media

Social Preference in Preschoolers: Effects of Morphological Self-Similarity and Familiarity

Adults prefer to interact with others that are similar to themselves. Even slight facial self-resemblance can elicit trust towards strangers. Here we investigate if preschoolers at the age of 5 years already use facial self-resemblance when they make social judgments about others. We found that, in the absence of any additional knowledge about prospective peers, children preferred those who look subtly like themselves over complete strangers. Thus, subtle morphological similarities trigger social preferences well before adulthood

Sensitivity to relational similarity and object similarity in apes and children

This research was supported by NSF SLC Grant SBE-0541957 awarded to the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC), the Max Planck Society, and Swarthmore Lang Sabbatical Fellowship.Relational reasoning is a hallmark of sophisticated cognition in humans [1, 2]. Does it exist in other primates? Despite some affirmative answers [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11], there appears to be a wide gap in relational ability between humans and other primates—even other apes [1, 2]. Here, we test one possible explanation for this gap, motivated by developmental research showing that young humans often fail at relational reasoning tasks because they focus on objects instead of relations [12, 13, 14]. When asked, “duck:duckling is like tiger:?,” preschool children choose another duckling (object match) rather than a cub. If other apes share this focus on concrete objects, it could undermine their relational reasoning in similar ways. To test this, we compared great apes and 3-year-old humans’ relational reasoning on the same spatial mapping task, with and without competing object matches. Without competing object matches, both children and Pan species (chimpanzees and bonobos) spontaneously used relational similarity, albeit children more so. But when object matches were present, only children responded strongly to them. We conclude that the relational gap is not due to great apes’ preference for concrete objects. In fact, young humans show greater object focus than nonhuman apes.PostprintPeer reviewe

Tool use for corpse cleaning in chimpanzees

For the first time, chimpanzees have been observed using tools to clean the corpse of a deceased group member. A female chimpanzee sat down at the dead body of a young male, selected a firm stem of grass, and started to intently remove debris from his teeth. This report contributes novel behaviour to the chimpanzee’s ethogram, and highlights how crucial information for reconstructing the evolutionary origins of human mortuary practices may be missed by refraining from developing adequate observation techniques to capture non-human animals’ death responses.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Human listeners' perception of behavioural context and core affect dimensions in chimpanzee vocalizations

Vocalizations linked to emotional states are partly conserved among phylogenetically related species. This continuity may allow humans to accurately infer affective information from vocalizations produced by chimpanzees. In two pre-registered experiments, we examine human listeners' ability to infer behavioural contexts (e.g. discovering food) and core affect dimensions (arousal and valence) from 155 vocalizations produced by 66 chimpanzees in 10 different positive and negative contexts at high, medium or low arousal levels. In experiment 1, listeners (n = 310), categorized the vocalizations in a forced-choice task with 10 response options, and rated arousal and valence. In experiment 2, participants (n = 3120) matched vocalizations to production contexts using yes/no response options. The results show that listeners were accurate at matching vocalizations of most contexts in addition to inferring arousal and valence. Judgments were more accurate for negative as compared to positive vocalizations. An acoustic analysis demonstrated that, listeners made use of brightness and duration cues, and relied on noisiness in making context judgements, and pitch to infer core affect dimensions. Overall, the results suggest that human listeners can infer affective information from chimpanzee vocalizations beyond core affect, indicating phylogenetic continuity in the mapping of vocalizations to behavioural contexts

Studying Great Apes and Cultural Diversity to Understand the Human Mind

Psychologists want to understand how the human mind is extraordinary among animal minds and where the unique aspects of human minds and behaviors come from. To build scientific understanding of human minds, we must study the wide range of humans across cultures, to know what all humans have in common and which aspects of human minds are diverse. However, this is not enough-studying humans across cultures tells us how humans think and act, not how they are unique among animals. To understand how humans are similar and dierent from other animals, we must study other animals too, especially our close primate relatives, the great apes, who have minds that are similar to ours in many, but not all, ways. So, to understand human minds and behaviors, researchers should study humans and non-humans at a scale that allows us to explore the origins of the similarities and dierences of minds and behaviors across our world today

Chimpanzees use social information to acquire a skill they fail to innovate

E.J.C.v.L. was funded by the European Union under European Research Council Starting Grant no. 101042961—CULT_ORIGINS.Cumulative cultural evolution has been claimed to be a uniquely human phenomenon pivotal to the biological success of our species. One plausible condition for cumulative cultural evolution to emerge is individuals’ ability to use social learning to acquire know-how that they cannot easily innovate by themselves. It has been suggested that chimpanzees may be capable of such know-how social learning, but this assertion remains largely untested. Here we show that chimpanzees use social learning to acquire a skill that they failed to independently innovate. By teaching chimpanzees how to solve a sequential task (one chimpanzee in each of the two tested groups, n = 66) and using network-based diffusion analysis, we found that 14 naive chimpanzees learned to operate a puzzle box that they failed to operate during the preceding three months of exposure to all necessary materials. In conjunction, we present evidence for the hypothesis that social learning in chimpanzees is necessary and sufficient to acquire a new, complex skill after the initial innovation.Peer reviewe

Studying Great Apes and Cultural Diversity to Understand the Human Mind

Psychologists want to understand how the human mind is extraordinary among animal minds and where the unique aspects of human minds and behaviors come from. To build scientific understanding of human minds, we must study the wide range of humans across cultures, to know what all humans have in common and which aspects of human minds are diverse. However, this is not enough-studying humans across cultures tells us how humans think and act, not how they are unique among animals. To understand how humans are similar and dierent from other animals, we must study other animals too, especially our close primate relatives, the great apes, who have minds that are similar to ours in many, but not all, ways. So, to understand human minds and behaviors, researchers should study humans and non-humans at a scale that allows us to explore the origins of the similarities and dierences of minds and behaviors across our world today

Chimpanzees engage in competitive altruism in a triadic ultimatum game

Partner choice promotes competition among individuals to be selected as a cooperative partner, a phenomenon referred to as competitive altruism. We explored whether chimpanzees engage in competitive altruism in a triadic Ultimatum Game where two proposers can send offers simultaneously or consecutively to a responder who can only accept one of the two competing offers. In a dyadic control condition only one proposer at a time could send an offer to the responder. Chimpanzees increased their offers across trials in the competitive triadic, but not in the dyadic control condition. Chimpanzees also increased their offers after being rejected in previous triadic trials. Furthermore, we found that chimpanzees, under specific conditions, outcompete first proposers in triadic consecutive trials before the responder could choose which offer to accept by offering more than what is expected if they acted randomly or simply offered the smallest possible amount. These results suggest that competitive altruism in chimpanzees did not emerge just as a by-product of them trying to increase over previous losses. Chimpanzees might consider how others’ interactions affect their outcomes and engage in strategies to maximize their chances of being selected as cooperative partners