Cooperation beyond the dyad: on simple models and a complex society

Abstract

Players in Axelrod and Hamilton's model of cooperation were not only in a Prisoner's Dilemma, but by definition, they were also trapped in a dyad. But animals are rarely so restricted and even the option to interact with third parties allows individuals to escape from the Prisoner's Dilemma into a much more interesting and varied world of cooperation, from the apparently rare 'parcelling' to the widespread phenomenon of market effects. Our understanding of by-product mutualism, pseudo-reciprocity and the snowdrift game is also enriched by thinking 'beyond the dyad'. The concepts of by-product mutualism and pseudo-reciprocity force us to think again about our basic definitions of cooperative behaviour (behaviour by a single individual) and cooperation (the outcome of an interaction between two or more individuals). Reciprocity is surprisingly rare outside of humans, even among large-brained 'intelligent' birds and mammals. Are humans unique in having extensive cooperative interactions among non-kin and an integrated cognitive system for mediating reciprocity? Perhaps, but our best chance for finding a similar phenomenon may be in delphinids, which also live in large societies with extensive cooperative interactions among non-relatives. A system of nested male alliances in bottlenose dolphins illustrates the potential and difficulties of finding a complex system of cooperation close to our own.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 105 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.