Publication Date:
2000-05-08
Description:
The "tragedy of the commons," that is, the selfish exploitation of resources in the public domain, is a reason for many of our everyday social conflicts. However, humans are often more helpful to others than evolutionary theory would predict, unless indirect reciprocity takes place and is based on image scoring (which reflects the way an individual is viewed by a group), as recently shown by game theorists. We tested this idea under conditions that control for confounding factors. Donations were more frequent to receivers who had been generous to others in earlier interactions. This shows that image scoring promotes cooperative behavior in situations where direct reciprocity is unlikely.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Wedekind, C -- Milinski, M -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2000 May 5;288(5467):850-2.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Abteilung Verhaltensokologie, Zoologisches Institut, Universitat Bern, 3032 Hinterkappelen, Switzerland. claus.wedekind@ed.ac.uk〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10797005" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
*Altruism
;
*Cooperative Behavior
;
Games, Experimental
;
Humans
;
*Social Behavior
;
*Social Perception
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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