Collaborative Research: How between-group competition impacts within-group cooperation

人们普遍认为，没有什么能像共同的敌人那样团结起来，但这在多大程度上是正确的？经济学、人类学和心理学的最新进展支持一种现象的存在，即群体之间的冲突促进了群体内部的合作。对于一个以提高合作为目标的社会来说，这是一个令人不安的暗示，表明群体之间的冲突对于提高群体内部的合作是必要的。这个项目的目标是确定这种情况在多大程度上是真实的，并利用这些信息来制定在没有群体间冲突的情况下改善合作的可能性。理解这一点将有利于社会从地方互动到国际关系的层面。该项目还将在科学探究方法方面培训众多本科生、研究生和研究生，并通过与公众、当地K-12学校的对话，以及我们与费尔班克自然历史博物馆的持续合作，将这项研究带给公众。技术描述：最近的研究表明存在局部利他主义，在这种利他主义中，群体之间的竞争促进了群体内部的合作。从进化的角度来看，这是有道理的，因为一个群体中的个体，通过合作来战胜其他群体，会比那些不这样做的个体做得更好。但在多大程度上，这是合作行为的普遍特征，而不是人类独有的特征？如果这是合作的一种普遍倾向，那么它真正推动合作的频率有多高？当前提案的总体目标是：1)了解群体间竞争对合作的影响；2)这些决定背后的激素机制。为了实现这些目标，研究人员将研究猴子、类人猿和人类如何在有或没有群体竞争的情况下与群体中的其他成员合作。重点将放在在其社会群体内相互作用的个人身上，这些人自由地选择与其群体中的其他成员共同工作，但在严格控制的环境中，允许确定具体变量的影响。这种方法结合了自然主义实地工作的最佳方面，突出了个体互动中合作的内生出现，以及严格控制实验的最佳方面，突出了机制并阐明了特定环境如何影响合作。在相互作用过程中，将收集两种激素的水平，睾酮和催产素，这两种激素被认为是理解合作的关键，从而开始揭示合作和竞争背后的内分泌机制。这项工作将有助于理清人类独有的合作特征与灵长类动物普遍共有的合作特征，并有助于阐明促进合作的核心机制，无论是与人类特有的适应相一致，还是缺乏人类特有的适应。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Popular belief holds that nothing unites like a common enemy, but to what degree is this true? Recent advances in economics, anthropology and psychology support the existence of a phenomenon in which conflict between groups improves cooperation within those groups. This has disturbing implications for a society whose goal is to improve cooperation, suggesting that between-group conflict is necessary to enhance within-group cooperation. The goal of this project is to determine the degree to which this is true and use the information to formulate possibilities for improving cooperation in the absence of intergroup conflict. Understanding this would benefit society from the level of local interactions to international relations. The project will also train numerous students at the undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate levels in the methods of scientific inquiry and bring this research to the general public through talks to the general public, at local K-12 schools, and through our ongoing collaboration with the Fernbank Museum of Natural History.Technical description:Recent research suggests the existence of parochial altruism, in which between-group competition improves within-group cooperation. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense, as individuals within a group, who cooperate to outcompete other groups, will do better than individuals who fail to do so. But to what extent is this a broad feature of cooperative behavior versus a characteristic specific to humans? If this is a general disposition of cooperation, how frequently is it really a driver of cooperation? The overarching goals of the current proposal are to 1) understand the impact of between-group competition on cooperation and 2) the hormonal mechanisms underlying these decisions. To achieve these goals the researchers will examine how monkeys, apes and humans cooperate with other members of their group, with and without between-group competition. The focus will be on individuals interacting within their social groups, who are freely choosing to work jointly with other members of their group, but in tightly controlled circumstances that allow the influence of specific variables to be identified. This approach combines the best aspects of naturalistic field work, highlighting the endogenous emergence of cooperation from individual interactions, and the best aspects of tightly controlled experiments, highlighting the mechanisms and clarifying how specific contexts influence cooperation. Levels of two hormones purported to be key to understanding cooperation, testosterone and oxytocin, will be collected during the interactions to begin to unpack the endocrine mechanisms underlying cooperation and competition. This work will help to untangle uniquely human characteristics of cooperation from those more broadly shared across the primates and help elucidate core mechanisms that promote cooperation, either in concert with, or in the absence of, human-specific adaptations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.