The rise and fall of cooperation through reputation and group polarization

Jörg Gross () and Carsten K. W. Dreu
Additional contact information
Jörg Gross: Leiden University
Carsten K. W. Dreu: Leiden University

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Humans exhibit a remarkable capacity for cooperation among genetically unrelated individuals. Yet, human cooperation is neither universal, nor stable. Instead, cooperation is often bounded to members of particular groups, and such groups endogenously form or break apart. Cooperation networks are parochial and under constant reconfiguration. Here, we demonstrate how parochial cooperation networks endogenously emerge as a consequence of simple reputation heuristics people may use when deciding to cooperate or defect. These reputation heuristics, such as “a friend of a friend is a friend” and “the enemy of a friend is an enemy” further lead to the dynamic formation and fission of cooperative groups, accompanied by a dynamic rise and fall of cooperation among agents. The ability of humans to safeguard kin-independent cooperation through gossip and reputation may be, accordingly, closely interlinked with the formation of group-bounded cooperation networks that are under constant reconfiguration, ultimately preventing global and stable cooperation.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08727-8 Abstract (text/html)

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:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-08727-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-08727-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().