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

普遍认为，没有什么像共同的敌人那样团结在一起，但这一点在多大程度上是正确的？经济学、人类学和心理学最近的进步支持了一种现象的存在，即群体之间的冲突促进了这些群体内部的合作。这对一个以改善合作为目标的社会产生了令人不安的影响，表明群体之间的冲突对于加强群体内合作是必要的。该项目的目标是确定这在多大程度上是真实的，并利用这些信息制定在没有群体间冲突的情况下改善合作的可能性。理解这一点将使社会从地方互动到国际关系的水平上受益。该项目还将培训许多本科生、研究生和研究生学习科学研究的方法，并通过与公众、当地K-12学校的讲座以及我们与芬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，存在狭隘的利他主义，在这种情况下，群体之间的竞争促进了群体内的合作。从进化论的角度来看，这是有道理的，因为一个群体中合作以击败其他群体的个人，将比没有做到这一点的个人做得更好。但在多大程度上，这是合作行为的广泛特征，而不是人类特有的特征？如果这是一种普遍的合作倾向，那么它有多频繁地真正成为合作的推动力？当前提案的首要目标是：1)了解集团间竞争对合作的影响；2)这些决定背后的荷尔蒙机制。为了实现这些目标，研究人员将研究猴子、猿类和人类如何在有或没有群体间竞争的情况下与其群体中的其他成员合作。重点将放在在他们的社会群体中互动的个人身上，他们可以自由地选择与群体中的其他成员共同工作，但在严格控制的情况下，可以确定特定变量的影响。这种方法结合了自然主义实地工作的最佳方面，突出了从个人互动中内生的合作，以及严格控制的实验的最佳方面，突出了机制，并阐明了特定背景如何影响合作。在相互作用过程中，将收集两种据称对理解合作至关重要的荷尔蒙--睾酮和催产素的水平，以开始揭示合作和竞争背后的内分泌机制。这项工作将有助于从灵长类动物中更广泛的合作特征中解开人类独有的特征，并帮助阐明促进合作的核心机制，无论是否与人类特有的适应相一致。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.