Cooperation, Altruism, and Self-control

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Non-technical Summary: Cooperation, Altruism and Self-Control P.I. David W. Stephens IBN- 9507668 Cooperation is a key component of human and animal social behavior. Scientists who study animal behavior have borrowed ideas from economic game theory to study the evolution and maintenance of animal cooperation. The simplest category of games studied by game theorists is "Two-player, 2-by-2 games" in which each of two participants must choose one of two actions. This study uses 2-by-2 games as an experimental and theoretical tool to understand the economic and evolutionary underpinnings of animal cooperation. By restricting this study to 2-by-2 games, the investigator can simplify and categorize the range of possible "cooperative" situations. Cooperation may be either "selfish," the best action in the short-term for both participants, or "altruistic," a good long-term action that sacrifices short-terms gains. Altruism is considered a central problem in evolutionary studies of behavior, because the process of natural selection is thought to be fundamentally competitive. Experimental studies suggest that animals seldom cooperate altruistically. One hypothesis explaining this fact is that animals have strong and well- documented preferences for immediate reward. In psychological jargon, they often fail to show the required "self-control" to wait for a good but delayed reward. This study is composed a series of experiments in which the investigator will manipulate the costs and benefits of well- defined actions. One experiment will compare the cooperative abilities of three specis of bird, the pinon jay, a highly social member of the crow group, the bluejay, a non-social member of the crow group ,and the european starling, an unrelated gregarious bird. In a parallel study the investigator will measure the strength of each species' preferences for imediate reward. The investigator will then ask whether the species differ in their tendencies to cooperation, and whether these differences correlate with their measured preferences for immediacy. A second experiment will test a basic claim of mathematical models of altruistic cooperaion. Mathematical modelers have argued that the combination of repetition of a 2-by-2 game, and a strategy of "reciprocal cooperation" can make altruistic cooperation a good short-term action. A third experiment will test the investigator's hypothesis that strong preferences for immediacy explain the observed failure of animals to cooperate altruistically in laboratory situations.