Abstract: "Human between-group interactions are highly variable, ranging from violent to tolerant and affiliative. Tolerance between groups is linked to our unique capacity for large-scale cooperation and cumulative culture, but its evolutionary origins are understudied. In chimpanzees, one of our closest living relatives, predominantly hostile between-group interactions impede cooperation and information flow across groups. In contrast, in our other closest living relative, the bonobo, tolerant between-group associations are observed. However, as these associations can...
"Humans display a capacity for tolerance and cooperation among social groups that is rare in the animal kingdom, our long history of war and political strife notwithstanding. But how did we get that way...
Haller Hall, Geological Museum Room 102, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA
Professor Robert Boyd
Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University
Cooperation based on reciprocity is undermined by perception errors, mistakes that cause interacting individuals to disagree about past behavior. Strategies like Win-Stay-Lose-Shift (WSLS) and Generous Tit for Tat (GTFT) can reestablish cooperation following a perception error but only when errors arise infrequently. Here I introduce a strategy that relies on third-party arbitration to resolve disagreements, and show that...
My research focusses mainly on questions related to aspects of competition and cooperation within and between groups. I make use of our closest living...
My lab’s research asks how brains change in response to selection pressure on behavior, and how brains acquire heritable adaptations for complex, learned...
Research conducted at the Culture, Cognition and Coevolution Laboratory aims to construct a vertically integrated approach to culture and cultural evolution that synthesizes theory and methods from across the sciences, particularly from...