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

人类的互惠能力是促成合作的主要机制之一。当个人以互惠的方式轮流合作时，从长远来看，他们比那些只关心自己眼前利益的人过得更好。在包括生物学、心理学和经济学在内的许多领域都有影响的合作理论将互惠视为人类合作的核心组成部分。然而，尽管有大量的理论工作，但人们对互惠的基本心理机制知之甚少。人类思维的哪些特征使我们能够进行互惠？是什么认知能力使人类能够以其他动物没有的方式进行合作？我们假设，规划未来、发挥耐心和容忍一定程度风险的认知能力是互惠合作的基本心理特征。这些认知技能的进化是互惠的必要先决条件，这可以解释合作在人类社会中扮演的重要角色，以及人类甚至在不相关的个人组成的大群体中参与合作互动的独特能力。此外，我们认为，人类参与互惠合作的很大程度上的可变性是由于这些认知技能的个体差异。因此，了解合作中个体差异的原因是促进和促进个体之间合作的必要步骤。基于理论工作和最初的经验证据，我们将未来规划技能、耐心和风险承受能力作为互惠的基本能力。在方法上，我们将结合三条互补的调查线：一条研究链将通过研究黑猩猩作为人类最近的灵长类亲戚之一来评估人类互惠能力的进化基础。我们的假设是，由于黑猩猩规划未来的能力、耐心技能和风险承受能力的差异，它们以有限的方式进行互惠行为。第二部分研究将着眼于3至6岁儿童互惠合作的出现。有证据表明，儿童在这个年龄窗口期获得了互惠合作的能力，我们将检验这样一个假设，即互惠的发展出现可以通过计划技能、耐心和风险偏好的变化来解释。第三部分实验将检验成年人在参与互惠合作倾向方面的个体差异，衡量互惠的可变性是否可以用未来规划技能、耐心和风险承受能力的差异来解释。通过这种多学科的方法，我们将有独特的机会来确定人类互惠的关键心理机制。该研究项目的一个重要方面是将基础研究的见解转化为促进整个社会合作的项目。在商业中，从业者已经意识到需要更多的协作方法，并且迫切需要洞察力和指导方针来理解和促进组织内部和组织之间的协作工作。出于这个原因，我们将与协作工作协会（ICW）密切合作，ICW是国际协作标准（ISO44001）背后的组织，它是公司分享最佳实践和跨部门有效协作工作基准的平台。我们将与ICW的代表定期举行会议，以计划和制定这项研究的使用策略，并在最后的撤退中，所有来自当前项目的研究人员，国际合作研究专家和ICW的合作者将聚集在一起讨论研究结果的影响。

Humans' ability to reciprocate is one of the major mechanisms enabling cooperation. 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. Theories of cooperation that have been influential across many fields, including biology, psychology and economics, view reciprocity as a central component of human cooperation. Despite extensive theoretical work, however, little is known about the foundational psychological mechanisms that enable reciprocity. What features of the human mind enable us to engage in reciprocity? What are the cognitive abilities that make it possible for humans to cooperate in ways not found in other animals? We hypothesize that the cognitive abilities to plan for the future, to exert patience, and to tolerate a level of risk are fundamental psychological traits for reciprocity-based cooperation. The evolution of these cognitive skills are necessary prerequisites for reciprocity, which can explain the important role that cooperation plays in human societies and the distinctly human capacity to engage in cooperative interactions even in large groups of unrelated individuals. Furthermore, we suggest that a great amount of humans' variability to engage in reciprocal cooperation is due to individual differences in these cognitive skills. Hence, understanding the causes of individual variation in cooperation is a necessary step towards promoting and fostering cooperation between individuals.Based upon theoretical work and initial empirical evidence, we target future planning skills, patience, and risk tolerance as foundational capacities for reciprocity. Methodologically, we will combine three complementary lines of inquiry: One strand of research will assess the evolutionary basis of the human capacity for reciprocity, by studying chimpanzees as one of humans' closest primate relatives. Our hypothesis is that chimpanzees engage in reciprocal behaviour in limited ways because of differences in their ability to plan for the future, patience skills, and risk tolerance. A second strand of research will look at the emergence of reciprocal cooperation in children between 3 and 6 years of age. Evidence suggests that children acquire the capacity for reciprocal cooperation during this age-window, and we will test the hypothesis that this developmental emergence of reciprocity can be explained by changes in planning skills, patience, and changes in risk preferences. A third strand of experiments will 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 skills, patience, and risk tolerance. With this multidisciplinary approach, we will have the unique opportunity to identify the critical psychological mechanisms for human reciprocity. An important aspect of this research project is to translate the insights from basic research to develop programs that foster cooperation in society-at-large. In business, practitioners have come to realize the need for more collaborative approaches and are in urgent need of insights and guidelines to understand and promote collaborative working within and between organizations. For this reason, we will closely collaborate with the Institute for Collaborative Working (ICW), the organization behind the International Standard on Collaboration (ISO44001) that serves as the platform for firms to share best practices and benchmark effective collaborative working across different sectors. We will have regular meetings with representatives of the ICW to plan and strategize the use of this research as well as a final retreat where all researchers from the current project, international experts on cooperation research, and collaborators from the ICW will gather to discuss implications of the research findings.