RT Journal Article
T1 Transition from reciprocal cooperation to persistent behaviour in social dilemmas at the end of adolescence
A1 Gutiérrez Roig, Mario
A1 Gracia-Lázaro, Carlos
A1 Perelló, Josep
A1 Moreno, Yamir
A1 Sánchez, Angel
AB While human societies are extraordinarily cooperative in comparison with other social species, the question of why we cooperate with unrelated individuals remains open. Here we report results of a lab-in-the-field experiment with people of different ages in a social dilemma. We find that the average amount of cooperativeness is independent of age except for the elderly, who cooperate more, and a behavioural transition from reciprocal, but more volatile behaviour to more persistent actions towards the end of adolescence. Although all ages react to the cooperation received in the previous round, young teenagers mostly respond to what they see in their neighbourhood regardless of their previous actions. Decisions then become more predictable through midlife, when the act of cooperating or not is more likely to be repeated. Our results show that mechanisms such as reciprocity, which is based on reacting to previous actions, may promote cooperation in general, but its influence can be hindered by the fluctuating behaviour in the case of children. © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
PB Macmillan
SN 2041-1723
YR 2014
FD 2014-07-15
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10016/21477
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10016/21477
LA eng
NO This work was supported in part by MINECO (Spain) through grants PRODIEVO, FIS2011-25167 and FIS2009-09689, by Comunidad de Madrid (Spain) through grant MODELICO, by Comunidad de Aragón (Spain) through a grant to the group FENOL, by Generalitat de Catalunya (Spain) through grant Complexity Lab Barcelona (under contract 2014 SGR 608), by the EU FET Proactive project MULTIPLEX (contract no. 317532), by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, and by Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT) through the Barcelona Citizen Science Office project of the Barcelona Lab programme.
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