The economic basis of cooperation: tradeoffs between selfishness and generosity

Jeffrey R. Stevens and David W. Stephens

Behavioral Ecology, 2004, vol. 15, issue 2, 255-261

Abstract: The current study examined the economics of cooperation in controlled-payoff games by using captive blue jays, Cyanocitta cristata. This investigation used a special feeding apparatus to test for the stability of cooperative choice in a series of iterated games. The jays experienced experimentally determined game theoretical payoff matrices, which determined the distribution of food to themselves and their opponent, depending on their decision to cooperate or defect. The experiment tested four game matrices, called the cooperate only, defect only, prisoner's dilemma, and opponent control treatments. This study found little cooperation in the defect only and prisoner's dilemma treatments. Cooperation occurred significantly more often in the opponent control treatment. These findings suggest that the jays attend to short-term consequences; they do not cooperate in the absence of an immediate benefit (defect only), even if a long-term benefit may exist (prisoner's dilemma). The opponent control treatment suggests that cooperation can occur when an individual's benefits depend completely on the actions of others; therefore, generosity is cheap. This study, therefore, agrees with recent studies in proposing alternative models of cooperation. Copyright 2004.

Keywords: blue jay; cooperation; game theory; Pavlov; prisoner's dilemma; Tit for Tat (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arh006 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:beheco:v:15:y:2004:i:2:p:255-261

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().