Thursday, August 30, 2012

What's the point of being nice?

Vervet monkeys


Vervet monkeys are highly cooperative but they will attack an individual who acts selfishly. 
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Altruism and cooperation among humans and other animals are all very well, but what's to stop a few selfish individuals from taking advantage? 
Co-operative behaviour, particularly one-off acts of kindness by strangers (known as non-reciprocal altruism) confuses scientists. 
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Why does this apparently self-defeating behaviour persist?
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The importance of co-operation has long been acknowledged. 
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In the 17th century, philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote that life without co-operative social contracts would be, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. 
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In 1871, Darwin noted that, Communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.
But the paradox remains: if natural selection favours self-serving behaviour and those who help others diminish their own reproductive success, why bother being nice?
At a recent lecture at the Zoological Society London (ZSL) entitled "Why be nice? Understanding co-operative behaviour in humans and other animals".
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First up was Nigel Franks rom the University of Bristol, who researches "colony-level cognition" in ants. 
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This en masse form of co-operation seems to be facilitated by "quorum sensing", where individual ants change their behaviour once they sense that a threshold has been met for a particular stimulus. 
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For example if enough ants have already adopted the new strategy. 
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In this regard ant society can be understood as a "super organism".
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With some 10,000 species, a biomass equalling that of humanity and ant ancestry dating back over 100m years, the evolutionary success of the co-operative ant is clear.
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Next up was Andrew Young from the University of Exeter, whose research on long-tailed tits supports "kin selection theory": the birds always favour co-operating with relatives over non-kin, said Young. Among mammals, the naked mole rat is the most co-operative breeder of all mammals. 
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But there's no evidence among non-primate mammals that self-serving cheaters are ever punished.
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Among primates, however, there are examples of cheating being punished. 
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In the 1980s, Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth observed that if a wild vervet monkey discovered a fruiting tree but did not make the "food call" to alert the rest of the troop, and was later caught eating the spoils alone, the self-serving monkey received a beating. 
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Research at Frans de Waal's labiratory at Emory University last year revealed that dogs and monkeys favour co-operation and refuse to participate in unfair social exchanges.
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The third entertaining lecture, given by Redouan Bshary of Neuchatel University in Switzerland, examined the fascinating social contracts between cleaner fish (wrasse) and their clients (grouper fish). 
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Cleaner fish co-operate by removing parasites from much larger predator fish. 
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But as wrasse are partial to the protective mucus on the skin of clients, they would rather bite them than feed on parasites. 
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What inhibits them from doing this?
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Bshary observed that when client fish have a choice of cleaner fish, cleaners are less likely to bite their customers, and where client fish are visible to other cleaner fish they are less likely to eat cleaner fish. 
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It would seem social reputation is a significant factor in maintaining social contracts between species of fish, as it is between humans.
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But co-operation within species works differently. 
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Wrasse are born female and change sex if they grow large enough. 
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Males have a harem, and they control the female when she tends to clients. 
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If the client doesn't find the service agreeable and swims away the frustrated male wrasse will attack the smaller female. 
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This keeps female wrasse highly co-operative and less likely to bite the client and more likely to give an excellent grooming service.
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This behaviour by the larger male deprives the female wrasse of food, keeping her a small, controlled breeding partner. 
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But if the female stops co-operating and self-serves by biting clients, she can grow, change sex and fight off her ex-partner and take control of his harem.
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The final speaker, Simon Gachter from the University of Nottingham researches human group co-operation versus individual interest. 
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In trials staged in 16 different countries, with no chance to punish selfish behaviour, co-operation quickly failed. (Incidentally, Danish participants were the most co-operative and Australians the least co-operative.) 
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Gächter said the conclusion he drew from this was that punishment of cheaters is necessary for co-operation to thrive.
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He added that social contracts are influenced by culture and so the extent and nature of co-operation depends partly on where you live.
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I would add here that personality type and gender also have an effect on levels of pro-social behaviour. 
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Research by Mark van Vugt at the University of Amsterdam suggests that female behaviour is less hierarchical and more co-operative than that of males. 
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In his book Naturally selected, van Vugt claims that the inclusion of just one woman on a board of directors makes the company 20% less likely to go bankrupt.
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Carole Jahme  

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