Evolutionary Foundations of Cooperation and Group Cohesion

Steven A. Frank ()
Additional contact information
Steven A. Frank: University of California

A chapter in Games, Groups, and the Global Good, 2009, pp 3-40 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract In biology, the evolution of increasingly cooperative groups has shaped the history of life. Genes collaborate in the control of cells; cells efficiently divide tasks to produce cohesive multicellular individuals; individual members of insect colonies cooperate in integrated societies. Biological cooperation provides a foundation on which to understand human behavior. Conceptually, the economics of efficient allocation and the game-like processes of strategy are well understood in biology; we find the same essential processes in many successful theories of human sociality. Historically, the trace of biological evolution informs in two ways. First, the evolutionary transformations in biological cooperation provide insight into how economic and strategic processes play out over time-a source of analogy that, when applied thoughtfully, aids analysis of human sociality. Second, humans arose from biological history – a factual account of the past that tells us much about the material basis of human behavior.

Keywords: Local Resource; Local Group; Social Partner; Competitive Behavior; Behavioral Correlation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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:spr:spschp:978-3-540-85436-4_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783540854364

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-85436-4_1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Series in Game Theory from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().