Cognitive Cooperation: When the Going Gets Tough, Think as a Group

David Sloan Wilson, John J. Timmel and Ralph R. Miller

Chapter 2 in Teamwork, 2005, pp 33-55 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Cooperation is found throughout the animal kingdom and is especially common in our own species. For cooperation to evolve, there must first be a task that requires the coordinated action of more than one individual. Then it must be possible to solve the problems of cheating that often accompany coordinated action. Sometimes there is little incentive to cheat because cooperation produces large benefits for everyone at trivial individual cost. At other times cooperation is more costly and evolves only in groups where genetic relatedness is high or social control mechanisms are in place. Social insect colonies are one pinnacle of cooperation in the animal kingdom. Human social groups are another pinnacle, although the evolutionary pathways were not necessarily the same in the two cases (Sober and Wilson, 1998).

Keywords: Social Insect; Evolutionary Perspective; Evolutionary Psychology; Nominal Group; Group Cognition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-52320-3_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230523203

DOI: 10.1057/9780230523203_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().