Cooperation

This article is about cooperation as used in the social sciences. For co-operation in evolution, see Co-operation (evolution). For the economic model, see Cooperative.

Cooperation, co-operation or coöperation^[1] is the practice of individuals or larger societal entities working in common with mutually agreed-upon goals and possibly methods, instead of working separately in competition, and in which the success of one is dependent and contingent upon the success of another.

However, co-operation may be coerced (forced) or voluntary (freely chosen), and consequently individuals and groups might co-operate even although they have almost nothing in common qua interests or goals. Examples of that can be found in market trade, military wars, families, workplaces, schools and prisons, and more generally any institution or organisation of which individuals are part (out of own choice, by law, or forced).

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[edit] The Prisoner's Dilemma

Even if all members of a group would benefit if all cooperate, individual self-interest may not favor cooperation. The prisoner's dilemma codifies this problem and has been the subject of much research, both theoretical and experimental. Results from experimental economics show that humans often act more cooperatively than strict self-interest would seem to dictate.

One reason for this may be that if the prisoner's dilemma situation is repeated (the iterated prisoner's dilemma), it allows non-cooperation to be punished more, and cooperation to be rewarded more, than the single-shot version of the problem would suggest. It has been suggested that this is one reason for the evolution of complex emotional and social behavior in higher animals.

Another reason might be that humans are by nature socially co-operative beings, who, at least as infants, and usually thereafter, cannot survive without co-operating - although with maturation they gain much more choice about the kinds of co-operation they wish to have.

There are four main conditions that tend to be necessary for cooperative behaviour to develop between two individuals:

• An overlap in desires
• A chance of future encounters with the same individual
• Memory of past encounters with that individual
• A value associated with future outcomes

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