SBE-RCUK Lead Agency: The Cognitive Foundations of Human Reciprocity

互惠是使人类能够与他人合作的主要技能之一。当个人以互惠的方式轮流合作时，从长远来看，他们比只关心自己眼前利益的个人更好。然而，人们对所需的心理技能知之甚少。人类思维的哪些特征使我们能够进行互惠？当个体或多或少地合作时，我们如何解释呢？这个项目的重点是三种心理能力，它们被认为是互惠的关键：为未来做计划的能力，锻炼耐心的能力，以及容忍一定程度的风险的能力。衡量这些能力将有助于理解人类合作的基本方面，并制定在包括工作环境在内的日常社会互动中促进合作所需的战略。这个项目将在发育中首次出现互惠关系(通过研究儿童)，还将在人类进化的背景下审查互惠关系(通过比较人类与黑猩猩的能力)。为了评估为什么有些人比其他人更合作，该项目测试了成年人之间互惠行为的个体差异。这项研究项目的一个重要方面是将关于互惠基本技能的见解转化为促进整个社会合作的计划。在商业中，从业者已经意识到需要更多的合作方法，并迫切需要指导方针来促进组织中的合作工作；因此，研究人员将与协作工作研究所合作，该研究所是一个为行业中的协作工作开发高管培训的组织。该项目将使用一系列经过验证的测试来确定未来的规划、耐心和风险承受能力在多大程度上是基于互惠的合作所需的基本技能。该项目将整合三条相辅相成的调查路线。一条线路将通过将黑猩猩作为人类的一员来评估人类互惠能力的进化基础？最接近的灵长类亲戚。这将检验黑猩猩因未来计划、耐心和风险承受能力的差异而以有限的方式回报的假设。第二条线将追踪3至6岁儿童中出现的互惠现象。这将使研究人员能够测试互惠的出现是否可以通过三个组成部分能力的发展变化来解释。第三条线涉及旨在研究成人参与互惠合作倾向的个体差异的实验--衡量互惠合作的差异是否可以用未来计划、耐心和风险承受能力的差异来解释。研究人员将与合作工作研究所的主要成员和国际学者会面，讨论研究结果及其对促进工作场所合作互动的影响。该奖项反映了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。

Reciprocity is one of the major skills that enable humans to cooperate with others. When individuals take turns cooperating in a reciprocal fashion, they are better off in the long-term than individuals who care only about their own immediate benefit. However, little is known about the psychological skills needed. What features of the human mind enable us to engage in reciprocity? How can we explain when individuals are more or less cooperative? This project is focused on three psychological abilities that are hypothesized to be critical for reciprocity: The ability to plan for the future, to exercise patience, and to tolerate a level of risk. Measuring these abilities will facilitate understanding fundamental aspects of human cooperation and developing strategies needed to foster cooperation in daily social interactions, including the work environment. This project will examine reciprocity as it first emerges in development (by studying children), it will also examine reciprocity within the context of human evolution (by comparing human abilities to those of chimpanzees). To assess why some individuals are more cooperative than others, the project tests individual differences in reciprocal behavior across adults. An important aspect of this research project is to translate the insights about the basic skills for reciprocity into programs that foster cooperation in society-at-large. In business, practitioners have come to realize the need for more cooperative approaches and are in urgent need of guidelines to promote cooperative work in organizations; therefore, the researchers will partner with the Institute for Collaborative Working, an organization that develops executive training for collaborative working in industry.The project will use a battery of validated tests to determine the degree to which future planning, patience, and risk tolerance are the foundational skills required for reciprocity-based cooperation. The project will integrate three complementary lines of inquiry. One line will assess the evolutionary basis of the human capacity for reciprocity by studying chimpanzees as one of humans? closest primate relatives. This will test the hypothesis that chimpanzees reciprocate in limited ways because of differences in future planning, patience, and risk tolerance. A second line of inquiry will trace the emergence of reciprocity in children between 3 and 6 years of age. This will enable the researchers to test whether the emergence of reciprocity can be explained by developmental changes in the three component abilities. A third line involves experiments designed to examine individual differences among human adults in their tendency to engage in reciprocal cooperation -- measuring whether variability in reciprocity can be explained by differences in future planning, patience, and risk tolerance. Researchers will meet with key members of the Institute for Collaborative Working and international scholars to discuss the findings and their implications for fostering cooperative interactions in the work place.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.