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Lookup NU author(s): Dr John Lazarus
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
Throughout the organic world cooperation provides mutual benefit but is vulnerable to exploitation from free-riders. Over the last 30 years work in evolutionary biology and game theory has provided understanding of the conditions necessary for the maintenance of cooperation, and advances in gene-culture coevolution theory have extended this understanding to our own species. After a preamble on the evolutionary analysis of behaviour I outline this work. I then consider how cooperation is influenced by environmental adversity and find that in non-human species it is enhanced under these circumstances in a range of taxa. In a sample of human cases the same result is found in a majority, but the opposite effect in some when socioeconomic position is the measure of quality. In anthropological studies of societies living in extremis, again the opposite effect is found. I propose a sigmoid shape for the relationship between adversity and fitness (or human well-being) and a consequent inverted-U shaped relationship between adversity and the benefit of cooperation. Most of the data presented on the relationship between adversity and cooperation are consistent with this proposal. I suggest further tests of the proposal and place the study of cooperation in the broader context of prosociality.
Author(s): Lazarus J
Editor(s): Matthew Johnson
Publication type: Book Chapter
Publication status: Published
Book Title: Precariousness, Community and Participation
Year: 2018
Pages: 125-152
Print publication date: 13/06/2018
Online publication date: 07/12/2018
Acceptance date: 22/11/2017
Publisher: Routledge
Place Published: Abingdon
URL: https://www.routledge.com/Precariousness-Community-and-Participation/Johnson/p/book/9780367589691
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9781138499317
