Familiarity breeds… mutual aid (at least in some birds)

Posted 21 Jun 2012 / 0

Biology Letters “Long-term familiarity promotes joining in neighbour nest defence“

A Minor Post, Articles, Birds, Cooperation, Reciprocity, Social Networks

Scientific American “Why We Help”

Posted 21 Jun 2012 / 1

The July issue of Scientific American features a cover story written by Martin A. Nowak called “Why We Help“. This very short article contains a brief review of Nowak’s “five rules” for cooperation, a little bit of connection to experimental work in real organisms, and some hazy conjecture concerning what makes humans cooperate. It seems as Read More

A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Behavior, Climate Change, Cooperation, Evolution, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Kin Selection, Punishment, Reciprocity, Social Networks

PNAS paper explores the role of population structure in facilitating reciprocity

Posted 12 Jun 2012 / 3

The “Early Edition” of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America just posted online a paper entitled “Direct reciprocity in structured populations“. Authored by Matthijs van Veelen, Julián García, David G. Rand, and Martin A. Nowak, the paper combines two well-explored factors that influence how cooperation evolves: repeated Read More

Articles, Behavior, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Information Design, Reciprocity, Social Networks

Social Evolution Forum takes on role of social networking in human cooperation

Posted 18 May 2012 / 0

Social Evolution Forum Robin I.M. Dunbar “Networking Past and Present” Social Evolution Forum Nicholas Baumard “The Evolution of Cooperation: from Networks to Institutions” Social Evolution Forum Herbert Gintis “Commentary on Dunbar and Baumard” Some interesting stuff here: We may no longer live in fission-fusion tribes, but we still move around a lot socially (changing family partnerships, looking Read More