July 30, 2012 • 26 mins
Are men or women more cooperative? In this episode, Caroline and Cristen explore the science of cooperation, including how selfishness evolutionarily bred cooperation.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and I'm about
(00:21):
to start things off with a statement that might um
cause outrage from our more science minded and very knowledgeable listeners.
I'm nervous out there, yeah, because we've got we have
a number of whip smart scientists who listen in. So
I'm just gonna go ahead and say this from my
(00:42):
layman's perspective. Okay, so scientists out there, keep in mind,
I'm just trying to cleverly possibly te up this episode
about the evolution of cooperation. So what I was gonna
say was that, really, if we are thinking of this
podcast universe that we magically live in, and in evolutionary terms,
(01:05):
you and I really shouldn't be sitting at the same table, Caroline.
Why because we should probably have separate podcasts, you know,
because the survival of the fittest and everything like, humans
are naturally selfish, right, inherently selfish creatures, So I would
really want to start the Kristen Show. So I could
(01:27):
battle it out on the charts and the Caroline hour.
That's right, Christians limiting me, I really would talk for
an hour. Maybe we should do it um. But as
a matter of fact, it sort of does make sense
that we are sitting across the table talking, cooperating. Yah,
(01:49):
we're helping each other get ahead. Together, we are getting
farther than possibly we would separately. Although you know, the
theory behind cooperation and defe acting not helping other people,
being selfish and acting in one's own self interest is
that you know, as a defector, theoretically you would you
would get ahead because you're not You're not helping your neighbor,
(02:12):
so you're not doling out anything, you're not incurring any costs.
But then your neighbor doesn't get anything from you, doesn't
get any help, so she won't get ahead. So but
if you both help each other, then you both get ahead.
And since we like talking about success stories and this
is just maybe the grand access story of the human
(02:33):
species is perhaps cooperation, because scientists would refer to us
as super cooperators because without cooperation, we wouldn't even be
able to sit here, because we wouldn't have this technology.
We wouldn't have language. Thumbs Thumbs sort of bat things
around like cats, I guess um. But the whole idea
(02:56):
behind this is that cooperation is a driving force in evolution.
And Martin Noack, who is from Harvard University, in two
thousand six wrote that the emergence of genomes, cells, multicellular organisms,
social insects, and human society as a whole are all
based on cooperation. Right, which is counterintuitive because I made
(03:20):
the reference to evolution earlier, because the theory is based
on competition and the idea of rewarding selfish behavior. But
when you actually look at biological organization, you find so
much cooperation and self sacrifice in a lot of instances. Yeah,
and and I know you might be thinking this sounds
way more science e than we normally get. But don't work.
(03:42):
Don't worry, we'll get to the gender stuff. We are reliable,
we are cooperating in this. We bring it around a
gender every time. Right. But yeah, cooperation essentially means that
selfish replicators, you know, they're looking out for themselves, they
forego some of their reproductive potential to help one another. So,
like I said earlier, everybody gets ahead. Everybody wins and
(04:03):
no whak you mentioned from Harvard University. UM establish a
theory of five mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation how
all of this works. And the first one makes a
lot of sense, and that is kin selection. We want
to perpetuate our our genes, and so naturally we are
more willing to cooperate with people that we are related to.
(04:25):
And the closer they're related to us than the more
likely we are to lend a helping hands, right, And
that's the whole theory behind that. As we share more
genes obviously with people were more closely related to, So
there's the whole saying of I will jump in the
river to save two brothers or eight cousins. That's sort
of the idea behind that. UM. There's also network reciprocity,
which is formed in a mixed population of cooperators and defectors. UH.
(04:49):
Cooperators are busy helping each other and forming network clusters,
while defectors are getting left out because they're not benefiting
their neighbors at all. And then those clusters of cooperators
end up outcome repeating the defectors because like we said,
they're pushing each other ahead to succeed. And then we
have group selection um, which maintains the competition is not
only between individuals but also between groups, and a group
(05:13):
of cooperators will not so surprisingly grow faster than a
group of defectors because they can actually work together. And
this is something that will also come up in later
research on like teamwork and sports. Um that it's also
come up. And one thing that you guys might have
heard of, possibly is the prisoner's dilemma, which is a
(05:34):
test and activity that's been reproduced in several studies. That's
known as direct reciprocity. Basically, if I cooperate now, you
might cooperate later. Tip for tat you owe me, I
owe you um. And this relies basically on repeated encounters
between the same two individuals. And it's basically, to quote
the study like a barter economy based on the immediate
(05:56):
exchange of goods. So first less outline quickly the prisoners
the limit is just because this comes up so often
in this line of scientific literature. Yeah, so if Kristin
and I are both suspects who have been arrested on
suspicion of a crime, uh, they separate us and you know,
good cup bad cop, and they're just like beating us
(06:16):
down mentally trying to get one of us to confess
or both. The theory goes and tests have shown that
when one of the suspects confesses, so like let's say
Kristin confesses to the crime, like she did it or
we did it, or I did it or whatever, she
confesses but I don't, then she's the one who's cooperating.
She receives preferential treatment, favorable treatment, so she might not
(06:40):
go to prison, or might not go to prison for
as long because she cooperated. When both of us confess,
the outcome is worse because it's like, well, you've lost
your leverage. And even though we both cooperated, we're both
like super guilty, so we we do not get favorable
treatment either one of us. When both of us keep
silent though we're cooperating with each other, are we haven't
(07:00):
offered up any information, Neither one of us goes to
prison and gets shanked or shived or shoved half or
shoved uh, And so the outcome is better for both
of us. We might both end up going to prison
for a little while, but we didn't confess, we cooperated
with each other. So the outcome ends up although it's
not the best for one of us, it's the better
(07:22):
for both of us. Yeah, so it's a roll of
the dice and this prisoner prisoner's dilemma game that these
researchers will often play with participants to see how selfish
we are, whether or not we will go for the
more cooperative option and just hope for the best that
the other person in the game is also thinking cooperatively. Um,
(07:43):
but it's it's interesting how to see how those kinds
of games shake out. And again, this will come up
when we talk more about gender. And let's briefly touch
on that fifth mechanism, which is indirect reciprocity, which is
fueled by reputation. It's essentially the idea of doing something
in order to burnish your reputation in case of a
(08:04):
rainy day kind of Yeah. Basically, you help somebody, and
you don't necessarily expect immediate help, but you do expect
other people to take note, possibly inform others, and based
on your now sterling reputation, you expect down the line
to get some perks. And the study shows that this
is a very human attribute, This idea of indirect reciprocity
(08:26):
because we have to have the ability to actually, like remember,
keep track of our social network, remember who's done what,
who's benefited home, and kind of keep tallies of you know,
who's who's helping each other. Yeah, and that whole idea
of the social network dynamics UM has received some more
(08:47):
insight from a two thousand eleven study out of Harvard University,
which found that UM, when it comes to cooperation and
helpfulness within the social networks, everything is constant and changing
in response to those networks of people in those networks behaviors. Yeah,
when we have when you have a dynamic social network,
(09:10):
basically you get to choose the people that you want
to keep hanging out with, the people who give you
the greatest benefits, who you like the best. Um, you
end up with big groups of cooperators, because nobody wants
to hang out with the selfish guy. Yeah. And the
sweet little moral of the scientific story is that nice
guys can finish first, because you want you're a coo
(09:32):
cooperator exactly exactly. And uh yeah, So these dynamic groups
where you can pick and choose who you hang out with,
end up having very high level levels of cooperation because
you're rewarded for cooperating by getting to hang out with
the cool kids. If you're the selfish guy who's not cooperating,
then you typically end up getting shunned, and so you
learn from that mistake. You learn from the little sting
(09:53):
of being shunned. So then you try to cooperate, whether
it's heartfelt or not. You want to be part of
the group. So it keep says it keeps us in
check as well our behaviors, your reputation and social networks
and basically thinking that people are watching you. Now, there's
something that comes up a lot in this podcast that's
gonna put a wrinkle in our cooperative or non cooperative behavior,
(10:18):
and that would be hormones. Yes, there is known evidence
that the hormone oxytocin, the cuddly feely hormone released in
the female brain, especially during an orgasm that promotes bonding.
Little boost of oxytocin will make us more cooperative. Studies
have shown that a boost of oxytocin in our brain
(10:41):
will make us more cooperative, which makes sense, you know
if you think about all the different traits that are
associated with oxytocin. Now, on the flip side, of that.
A study published in January of two thousand twelve from
the University College London's Welcome Trust Center for neuro Imaging
found that testosterone, yep, testosterone makes us less cooperative. Yeah,
(11:09):
it kind of blinds you to other people's point of
view and makes you overvalue your own opinions at the
expense of cooperating. And so they did the study. They
had seventeen pairs of female volunteers working together, and they
did they had a little asterisk and they said that,
you know, we did seventeen pairs of female volunteers because
testosterone levels naturally low, and so they could have some
(11:32):
of the women take a pill or whatever to raise
their testosterone levels, whereas if they did that in men,
when you raise an already high testosterone level at backfires
and make some I don't know, weepy or something. Um.
But so they have these pairs of female volunteers working together,
and when given a placebo, the pairs cooperated well, performed
their assigned tasks better. But when they were given a
(11:55):
testosterone supplement, the benefit of cooperation was reduced into viduals
acted ego centrically and they tended to decide in favor
of their own ideas over those of their partner, So
watch out for that. Uh yeah. Dr Nick Right, who
was the lead researcher, said, too much cooperation and we
may never have our way. But if we're too self motivated,
(12:16):
we are likely to ignore people who have real insights.
So there is a balance to cooperation. And I mean,
if you're constantly rolling over for someone else, well, good grief,
don't do that. But then it can't be too hardheaded either. Well,
so does this mean that men and women are inherently
different as far as how they cooperate? Is there a
huge difference there? Well, I think that's the question we're
(12:37):
going to answer next of this podcast. Because you would assume,
based on that study that we decided about testosterone, we
know that men tend to have higher levels of testosterone
running through their bloodstream. Yeah, so you might think, well, sure,
guys aren't going to be as cooperative as women and
women are just you know, sweet little pancakes of helpfulness.
(12:59):
I don't know why pan aches that, you know, fluffy,
they're fluffy and put butter and um. But yeah, I
keep going. And there is some support for something called
the male warrior hypothesis. Yeah, and that's basically that men's
social behavior and psychology are more strongly intergroup driven than women's.
And there's all this stuff about, like you know, evolutionary
(13:20):
theory and men hunting the willed beast and everything and
taking home to their women. But basically, researchers from the
universities of Kent in England and Tilburg I believe in
the Netherlands in two thousand and seven found that men
contributed more to their group if the group was competing
against other groups. So that's that that can lead us
later into a bunch of like sports theory and and
(13:42):
team theory and stuff like that. But they found that
female cooperation was pretty much unaffected by intergroup competition. Yeah.
And there was a September two thousand eleven study published
by the American Psychological Association that looked at fifty years
of research because they are are a ton of studies
examining gender and helpfulness and cooperation, and they found that
(14:06):
men are more cooperative kind of like you just said,
particularly when the interests of an individual or pitted against
those of a group. Um, and men cooperate with other men.
This was interesting better than women cooperate with other women,
we should really not be getting alonger no competition and
we're two women, um, and women will cooperate more than
(14:29):
men in mixed sex interactions. So basically, everybody cooperates with
men better. That's what it sounds like. And you know,
I touched on evolutionary theory a second ago. But uh,
if they basically say that if everyone acted according to
self interest in hunting and warfare back in the day
with the wild beast and the mastodons, uh, no food
(14:52):
would be provided and all wars would be lost because
everybody would be looking out for themselves, like I don't
want to get hurt. I'm just gonna kill this wild
abest for my woman and myself, not for the rest
of you guys. And so basically men had to develop
strategies to cooperate with each other. Meanwhile, the theory behind
women's interaction and cooperation, according to the studies lead author,
is that ancestral women migrated between groups you know, as
(15:15):
wives are wont to do and quote, so the dynamics
among women would have been rife with sexual competition. Uh.
Stereotypes about catty women because all the way back back
to evolutionary times. But before I get too bummed out
about that, doctor Art Markman, who was the executive editor
(15:37):
of Cognitive Science UM, looked at some meta analysis on
all this, because yes, we see some gender differences here
and there, depending on group versus individual, versus who's sitting
across the table from you, versus whether or not you're
being an environment that's being monitored. And he found that
despite stereotypes, the gender differences when it comes ms to
(16:00):
cooperation is very small. It's almost statistically insignificant. He says, Well,
it does affect how how likely people are to cooperate
to some degree, it is not the most important factor. Yeah,
it's definitely fostering community and trust that helps people cooperate,
(16:21):
feel comfortable working together, rather than focusing on a gender balance.
So I mean, you shouldn't try to get, you know,
a room full of men, or make sure you have
an exact balance of men and women. Necessarily, just make
sure that the people you hire you know you're fostering
that temmunity feeling. Although it is interesting to see what
does happen when uh, say, we're in the room our
(16:43):
studio by ourselves having to cooperate away from the prying
eyes of all of our listeners. But if are you know,
when we could, we could stop and you know, not
be so cooperative with each other. But chances are when
you're being watched or monitored by some kind of an audience,
then in your reputation is kind of more on the line.
It does change how men and women will interact. It does.
(17:06):
And this is a study from you see Santa Barbara,
and they had men and women playing a game in
front of an audience of the same or opposite sex,
either in their home room or in an away room.
And so the theory is that while both males and
females wish to gain approval of their in group members,
in other words, the people in their home room, the
actions that are socially desirable differ across gender. So males
(17:29):
wish to signal that they're formidable, while females wish to
signal that their cooperative. So it has a lot to
do not so much with your gender a little bit.
Basically we cooperate the same amount, but we cooperate kind
of differently. So men cooperate less quote unquote at home
in their home room than do females, and cooperate more
(17:51):
when away, and they actually cooperate most when in front
of a single sex audience. Um, well, I thought it
was interesting this. Uh that that study from UC Santa
Barbara also supports UM A date a little bit dated
study and the Social Psychology Quarterly that found that again
there was a minor gender difference in cooperation. But no
(18:15):
matter what side women came out on whether or not
they're being more cooperative, cooperative excuse me, or defectors, we
tend to assume that we have the moral high ground. Yeah. Well, yeah,
we think we're more cooperative and altruistic and all that stuff.
And that that actually reminded me of our Women's Intuition podcast,
Like if you think in your brain that you're supposed
(18:37):
to be a certain way, you just assume that your
actions are more that way than somebody else, is kind
of yeah. Well, and also we tend to not get
as even this is all an experimental settings, but not
to get as emotionally worked up about having to hash
something out with someone else. Often though, the men were
more likely to leave um one of these prisoners dilemma
(18:59):
esque gay very agitated and upset, whereas when we were
like it's fine, I mean I was being as altruistic
as I could possibly be, so fluffy pankicks of cooperation
for everyone. Um. Now, we said we would get into
a little bit of sports theory, and by that I
mean just a little eaty bitty bit um. But a
(19:19):
two thousand four study in the Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology had a behavioral task assigned to these people
that involved shooting a basketball, and in this intergroup competition,
which is a combination of cooperation and competition, it led
to higher levels of intrinsic motivation, which we already kind
of talked about, where men were more likely to cooperate
if they were going up against a group. So basically,
(19:43):
intergroup competition has positive effects on enjoyment of the sport,
and so they recommend the study recommend structuring recreational activities
to include both competition and cooperation because that can facilitate
high levels of both intrinsic motivation and performance. I don't
think it supplies to me, because I hate competition or whatever,
but that's probably why I mean, we join up with
(20:04):
rex sports teams because it is fun. I mean, the
competition level is there enough that it's stimulating, but then
you also get the whole cooperative benefits. You get the bond,
you get to do the all hands in high five
cheer thing and poor big tubs of sports strengths on
people I've never done that, I should do that short
(20:28):
circuit our equipment. Um. And this whole competitive structure versus
cooperative structure translates not so surprisingly into the workplace, and
it is interesting to see how they compare in terms
of outcome, because a study published in two thousand three
in the Academy of Management Journal found that competitive structures
(20:51):
enhanced speed and a cooperative one enhances accuracy. Yeah, and
it makes sense if you think about it, because if
you're competing. Again, if if if Chris It and I
had different podcasts and we're recording at the same time,
and that's somehow how the universe work. That we had
to see who could record the best, the best podcast
the fastest. We we would probably be focused, yeah, more
(21:12):
on who would do it the fastest, because so you
would have the Caroline hour, like you said, maybe I'd
have the conger minute minute podcasts out. Yeah. But um,
the cooperative environment is really good for teams with extroverted
and agreeable members. Uh, teams low on these attributes function
(21:32):
better under a competitive structure, which I thought was interesting.
So I guess if you're extroverted friendly, you're more likely
to want to talk about stuff with your coworkers to
reach a solution. So I wonder if someone who swings
a little more introverted like myself, does that mean See,
I don't know, I was I was thinking about that too,
because you don't typically see introverted people like being really
(21:55):
cut throat in the workplace, but they do work more
into pendly. And so yeah, that that whole competitive system
is really good for people who do work independently because
it emphasizes performance differences and it rewards individuals with high performance.
So it can actually the good on the good the
good side, it can promote efficiency. On the bad side,
(22:16):
it can lead individuals to place their goals higher than
those of the organization. Yeah, and then there's the whole
challenge with a cooperative system that works well, like you said,
with people who are extroverted and agreeable, because if you
put them in more of a competitive reward structure, at
least according to this study, they made twice as many mistakes.
So they're rushing around me like, but I want to
talk to you about it. So, essentially, we need some
(22:39):
kind of balance between it all. You know, we can't
be too competitive, we can't be too cooperative. We've gotta
get things done. Essentially, we all need listen, everybody, just
be perfect, no pressure, no pressure at all, you know,
keep those ox oxetse and levels high but not too high. Yeah,
(23:01):
not too high. We don't want to be hugging all
the time. Yeah. But then with testoster, you know, yeah,
low but not too low. So I do want to
ask our listeners, you know, do they consider themselves to
be more cooperators or quote unquote defectors. Are you more
likely to feel like you're getting ahead if you're working
closely with other people? Do you like helping others? Do
(23:21):
you ever feel like you're helping others at the expense
of your own success? And with anyone surprised by the
lack of gender difference in cooperation, Yeah, because a lot
of people stereotypically, you know, anecdotally, people think that women
are inherently more cooperative. Not necessarily true, Yeah, but that
might be used as a misused as an adjective for subservient.
(23:43):
I digress send us an email. Mom. Stuff at Discovery
dot com is where you can send them. Okay, this
is an email from Claire about our Kathy episode. She says,
I'm a fourteen year old enthusiast of comic books and
Liz lemon Boo go clear and read plenty of both
(24:04):
Garfield and Cathy comics in my childhood. I wasn't aware
of the feminist backlash against Kathy until your podcast, and
frankly I disagree with it. Not only do I think
she shouldn't be held to a standard that other comics
are not held to, but if being a prominent woman
cartoonist means that she has to uphold some responsibility of
progressing women and having some sort of big, meaningful character arc,
(24:24):
when Garfield has only gotten fatter and John Lonelier are
the two genders in the media truly equal. I appreciate
feminism and think anyone's involvement in it is a fantastic
thing to do. But to assign someone a role like
that for something as to be blunt mediocre as a
newspaper comic strip, I think is over the top. Well,
I have one here from Madison, and it is in
(24:47):
response to our episode about erotica and which we mentioned
h b D s M themes in erotic literature, and
she writes, I'm a confident woman who incorporates media sum
into my sex life. I don't think safe, sane, consensual
kinky sex among adults is damaging to women. Men can
be subs too. If getting tied up and stuff is
(25:10):
really hot to you, then find someone else who's into it.
I appreciate you guys acknowledge a difference between actual violence
and consensual violent play of b D s M. The
key word here is that b D s M is
play Dan Savage Love, whom describes sex role play as
cops and robbers for adults with your pants off and
orgasm so true. One of my problems with fifty shades
(25:31):
is that it paints a picture that only screwed up,
broken people participate in bed SM. Screwed up broken people
participate in vanilla relationships too. Emotional and physical abuse is
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do something sex crazed and evil. It's a great headline.
Most kinsters I know are extremely polite and will only
(25:53):
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(26:16):
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(26:36):
It's how Stuff Works dot com for more on this
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twelve camera. It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and I'm about
(00:21):
to start things off with a statement that might um
cause outrage from our more science minded and very knowledgeable listeners.
I'm nervous out there, yeah, because we've got we have
a number of whip smart scientists who listen in. So
I'm just gonna go ahead and say this from my
(00:42):
layman's perspective. Okay, so scientists out there, keep in mind,
I'm just trying to cleverly possibly te up this episode
about the evolution of cooperation. So what I was gonna
say was that, really, if we are thinking of this
podcast universe that we magically live in, and in evolutionary terms,
(01:05):
you and I really shouldn't be sitting at the same table, Caroline.
Why because we should probably have separate podcasts, you know,
because the survival of the fittest and everything like, humans
are naturally selfish, right, inherently selfish creatures, So I would
really want to start the Kristen Show. So I could
(01:27):
battle it out on the charts and the Caroline hour.
That's right, Christians limiting me, I really would talk for
an hour. Maybe we should do it um. But as
a matter of fact, it sort of does make sense
that we are sitting across the table talking, cooperating. Yah,
(01:49):
we're helping each other get ahead. Together, we are getting
farther than possibly we would separately. Although you know, the
theory behind cooperation and defe acting not helping other people,
being selfish and acting in one's own self interest is
that you know, as a defector, theoretically you would you
would get ahead because you're not You're not helping your neighbor,
(02:12):
so you're not doling out anything, you're not incurring any costs.
But then your neighbor doesn't get anything from you, doesn't
get any help, so she won't get ahead. So but
if you both help each other, then you both get ahead.
And since we like talking about success stories and this
is just maybe the grand access story of the human
(02:33):
species is perhaps cooperation, because scientists would refer to us
as super cooperators because without cooperation, we wouldn't even be
able to sit here, because we wouldn't have this technology.
We wouldn't have language. Thumbs Thumbs sort of bat things
around like cats, I guess um. But the whole idea
(02:56):
behind this is that cooperation is a driving force in evolution.
And Martin Noack, who is from Harvard University, in two
thousand six wrote that the emergence of genomes, cells, multicellular organisms,
social insects, and human society as a whole are all
based on cooperation. Right, which is counterintuitive because I made
(03:20):
the reference to evolution earlier, because the theory is based
on competition and the idea of rewarding selfish behavior. But
when you actually look at biological organization, you find so
much cooperation and self sacrifice in a lot of instances. Yeah,
and and I know you might be thinking this sounds
way more science e than we normally get. But don't work.
(03:42):
Don't worry, we'll get to the gender stuff. We are reliable,
we are cooperating in this. We bring it around a
gender every time. Right. But yeah, cooperation essentially means that
selfish replicators, you know, they're looking out for themselves, they
forego some of their reproductive potential to help one another. So,
like I said earlier, everybody gets ahead. Everybody wins and
(04:03):
no whak you mentioned from Harvard University. UM establish a
theory of five mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation how
all of this works. And the first one makes a
lot of sense, and that is kin selection. We want
to perpetuate our our genes, and so naturally we are
more willing to cooperate with people that we are related to.
(04:25):
And the closer they're related to us than the more
likely we are to lend a helping hands, right, And
that's the whole theory behind that. As we share more
genes obviously with people were more closely related to, So
there's the whole saying of I will jump in the
river to save two brothers or eight cousins. That's sort
of the idea behind that. UM. There's also network reciprocity,
which is formed in a mixed population of cooperators and defectors. UH.
(04:49):
Cooperators are busy helping each other and forming network clusters,
while defectors are getting left out because they're not benefiting
their neighbors at all. And then those clusters of cooperators
end up outcome repeating the defectors because like we said,
they're pushing each other ahead to succeed. And then we
have group selection um, which maintains the competition is not
only between individuals but also between groups, and a group
(05:13):
of cooperators will not so surprisingly grow faster than a
group of defectors because they can actually work together. And
this is something that will also come up in later
research on like teamwork and sports. Um that it's also
come up. And one thing that you guys might have
heard of, possibly is the prisoner's dilemma, which is a
(05:34):
test and activity that's been reproduced in several studies. That's
known as direct reciprocity. Basically, if I cooperate now, you
might cooperate later. Tip for tat you owe me, I
owe you um. And this relies basically on repeated encounters
between the same two individuals. And it's basically, to quote
the study like a barter economy based on the immediate
(05:56):
exchange of goods. So first less outline quickly the prisoners
the limit is just because this comes up so often
in this line of scientific literature. Yeah, so if Kristin
and I are both suspects who have been arrested on
suspicion of a crime, uh, they separate us and you know,
good cup bad cop, and they're just like beating us
(06:16):
down mentally trying to get one of us to confess
or both. The theory goes and tests have shown that
when one of the suspects confesses, so like let's say
Kristin confesses to the crime, like she did it or
we did it, or I did it or whatever, she
confesses but I don't, then she's the one who's cooperating.
She receives preferential treatment, favorable treatment, so she might not
(06:40):
go to prison, or might not go to prison for
as long because she cooperated. When both of us confess,
the outcome is worse because it's like, well, you've lost
your leverage. And even though we both cooperated, we're both
like super guilty, so we we do not get favorable
treatment either one of us. When both of us keep
silent though we're cooperating with each other, are we haven't
(07:00):
offered up any information, Neither one of us goes to
prison and gets shanked or shived or shoved half or
shoved uh, And so the outcome is better for both
of us. We might both end up going to prison
for a little while, but we didn't confess, we cooperated
with each other. So the outcome ends up although it's
not the best for one of us, it's the better
(07:22):
for both of us. Yeah, so it's a roll of
the dice and this prisoner prisoner's dilemma game that these
researchers will often play with participants to see how selfish
we are, whether or not we will go for the
more cooperative option and just hope for the best that
the other person in the game is also thinking cooperatively. Um,
(07:43):
but it's it's interesting how to see how those kinds
of games shake out. And again, this will come up
when we talk more about gender. And let's briefly touch
on that fifth mechanism, which is indirect reciprocity, which is
fueled by reputation. It's essentially the idea of doing something
in order to burnish your reputation in case of a
(08:04):
rainy day kind of Yeah. Basically, you help somebody, and
you don't necessarily expect immediate help, but you do expect
other people to take note, possibly inform others, and based
on your now sterling reputation, you expect down the line
to get some perks. And the study shows that this
is a very human attribute, This idea of indirect reciprocity
(08:26):
because we have to have the ability to actually, like remember,
keep track of our social network, remember who's done what,
who's benefited home, and kind of keep tallies of you know,
who's who's helping each other. Yeah, and that whole idea
of the social network dynamics UM has received some more
(08:47):
insight from a two thousand eleven study out of Harvard University,
which found that UM, when it comes to cooperation and
helpfulness within the social networks, everything is constant and changing
in response to those networks of people in those networks behaviors. Yeah,
when we have when you have a dynamic social network,
(09:10):
basically you get to choose the people that you want
to keep hanging out with, the people who give you
the greatest benefits, who you like the best. Um, you
end up with big groups of cooperators, because nobody wants
to hang out with the selfish guy. Yeah. And the
sweet little moral of the scientific story is that nice
guys can finish first, because you want you're a coo
(09:32):
cooperator exactly exactly. And uh yeah, So these dynamic groups
where you can pick and choose who you hang out with,
end up having very high level levels of cooperation because
you're rewarded for cooperating by getting to hang out with
the cool kids. If you're the selfish guy who's not cooperating,
then you typically end up getting shunned, and so you
learn from that mistake. You learn from the little sting
(09:53):
of being shunned. So then you try to cooperate, whether
it's heartfelt or not. You want to be part of
the group. So it keep says it keeps us in
check as well our behaviors, your reputation and social networks
and basically thinking that people are watching you. Now, there's
something that comes up a lot in this podcast that's
gonna put a wrinkle in our cooperative or non cooperative behavior,
(10:18):
and that would be hormones. Yes, there is known evidence
that the hormone oxytocin, the cuddly feely hormone released in
the female brain, especially during an orgasm that promotes bonding.
Little boost of oxytocin will make us more cooperative. Studies
have shown that a boost of oxytocin in our brain
(10:41):
will make us more cooperative, which makes sense, you know
if you think about all the different traits that are
associated with oxytocin. Now, on the flip side, of that.
A study published in January of two thousand twelve from
the University College London's Welcome Trust Center for neuro Imaging
found that testosterone, yep, testosterone makes us less cooperative. Yeah,
(11:09):
it kind of blinds you to other people's point of
view and makes you overvalue your own opinions at the
expense of cooperating. And so they did the study. They
had seventeen pairs of female volunteers working together, and they
did they had a little asterisk and they said that,
you know, we did seventeen pairs of female volunteers because
testosterone levels naturally low, and so they could have some
(11:32):
of the women take a pill or whatever to raise
their testosterone levels, whereas if they did that in men,
when you raise an already high testosterone level at backfires
and make some I don't know, weepy or something. Um.
But so they have these pairs of female volunteers working together,
and when given a placebo, the pairs cooperated well, performed
their assigned tasks better. But when they were given a
(11:55):
testosterone supplement, the benefit of cooperation was reduced into viduals
acted ego centrically and they tended to decide in favor
of their own ideas over those of their partner, So
watch out for that. Uh yeah. Dr Nick Right, who
was the lead researcher, said, too much cooperation and we
may never have our way. But if we're too self motivated,
(12:16):
we are likely to ignore people who have real insights.
So there is a balance to cooperation. And I mean,
if you're constantly rolling over for someone else, well, good grief,
don't do that. But then it can't be too hardheaded either. Well,
so does this mean that men and women are inherently
different as far as how they cooperate? Is there a
huge difference there? Well, I think that's the question we're
(12:37):
going to answer next of this podcast. Because you would assume,
based on that study that we decided about testosterone, we
know that men tend to have higher levels of testosterone
running through their bloodstream. Yeah, so you might think, well, sure,
guys aren't going to be as cooperative as women and
women are just you know, sweet little pancakes of helpfulness.
(12:59):
I don't know why pan aches that, you know, fluffy,
they're fluffy and put butter and um. But yeah, I
keep going. And there is some support for something called
the male warrior hypothesis. Yeah, and that's basically that men's
social behavior and psychology are more strongly intergroup driven than women's.
And there's all this stuff about, like you know, evolutionary
(13:20):
theory and men hunting the willed beast and everything and
taking home to their women. But basically, researchers from the
universities of Kent in England and Tilburg I believe in
the Netherlands in two thousand and seven found that men
contributed more to their group if the group was competing
against other groups. So that's that that can lead us
later into a bunch of like sports theory and and
(13:42):
team theory and stuff like that. But they found that
female cooperation was pretty much unaffected by intergroup competition. Yeah.
And there was a September two thousand eleven study published
by the American Psychological Association that looked at fifty years
of research because they are are a ton of studies
examining gender and helpfulness and cooperation, and they found that
(14:06):
men are more cooperative kind of like you just said,
particularly when the interests of an individual or pitted against
those of a group. Um, and men cooperate with other men.
This was interesting better than women cooperate with other women,
we should really not be getting alonger no competition and
we're two women, um, and women will cooperate more than
(14:29):
men in mixed sex interactions. So basically, everybody cooperates with
men better. That's what it sounds like. And you know,
I touched on evolutionary theory a second ago. But uh,
if they basically say that if everyone acted according to
self interest in hunting and warfare back in the day
with the wild beast and the mastodons, uh, no food
(14:52):
would be provided and all wars would be lost because
everybody would be looking out for themselves, like I don't
want to get hurt. I'm just gonna kill this wild
abest for my woman and myself, not for the rest
of you guys. And so basically men had to develop
strategies to cooperate with each other. Meanwhile, the theory behind
women's interaction and cooperation, according to the studies lead author,
is that ancestral women migrated between groups you know, as
(15:15):
wives are wont to do and quote, so the dynamics
among women would have been rife with sexual competition. Uh.
Stereotypes about catty women because all the way back back
to evolutionary times. But before I get too bummed out
about that, doctor Art Markman, who was the executive editor
(15:37):
of Cognitive Science UM, looked at some meta analysis on
all this, because yes, we see some gender differences here
and there, depending on group versus individual, versus who's sitting
across the table from you, versus whether or not you're
being an environment that's being monitored. And he found that
despite stereotypes, the gender differences when it comes ms to
(16:00):
cooperation is very small. It's almost statistically insignificant. He says, Well,
it does affect how how likely people are to cooperate
to some degree, it is not the most important factor. Yeah,
it's definitely fostering community and trust that helps people cooperate,
(16:21):
feel comfortable working together, rather than focusing on a gender balance.
So I mean, you shouldn't try to get, you know,
a room full of men, or make sure you have
an exact balance of men and women. Necessarily, just make
sure that the people you hire you know you're fostering
that temmunity feeling. Although it is interesting to see what
does happen when uh, say, we're in the room our
(16:43):
studio by ourselves having to cooperate away from the prying
eyes of all of our listeners. But if are you know,
when we could, we could stop and you know, not
be so cooperative with each other. But chances are when
you're being watched or monitored by some kind of an audience,
then in your reputation is kind of more on the line.
It does change how men and women will interact. It does.
(17:06):
And this is a study from you see Santa Barbara,
and they had men and women playing a game in
front of an audience of the same or opposite sex,
either in their home room or in an away room.
And so the theory is that while both males and
females wish to gain approval of their in group members,
in other words, the people in their home room, the
actions that are socially desirable differ across gender. So males
(17:29):
wish to signal that they're formidable, while females wish to
signal that their cooperative. So it has a lot to
do not so much with your gender a little bit.
Basically we cooperate the same amount, but we cooperate kind
of differently. So men cooperate less quote unquote at home
in their home room than do females, and cooperate more
(17:51):
when away, and they actually cooperate most when in front
of a single sex audience. Um, well, I thought it
was interesting this. Uh that that study from UC Santa
Barbara also supports UM A date a little bit dated
study and the Social Psychology Quarterly that found that again
there was a minor gender difference in cooperation. But no
(18:15):
matter what side women came out on whether or not
they're being more cooperative, cooperative excuse me, or defectors, we
tend to assume that we have the moral high ground. Yeah. Well, yeah,
we think we're more cooperative and altruistic and all that stuff.
And that that actually reminded me of our Women's Intuition podcast,
Like if you think in your brain that you're supposed
(18:37):
to be a certain way, you just assume that your
actions are more that way than somebody else, is kind
of yeah. Well, and also we tend to not get
as even this is all an experimental settings, but not
to get as emotionally worked up about having to hash
something out with someone else. Often though, the men were
more likely to leave um one of these prisoners dilemma
(18:59):
esque gay very agitated and upset, whereas when we were
like it's fine, I mean I was being as altruistic
as I could possibly be, so fluffy pankicks of cooperation
for everyone. Um. Now, we said we would get into
a little bit of sports theory, and by that I
mean just a little eaty bitty bit um. But a
(19:19):
two thousand four study in the Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology had a behavioral task assigned to these people
that involved shooting a basketball, and in this intergroup competition,
which is a combination of cooperation and competition, it led
to higher levels of intrinsic motivation, which we already kind
of talked about, where men were more likely to cooperate
if they were going up against a group. So basically,
(19:43):
intergroup competition has positive effects on enjoyment of the sport,
and so they recommend the study recommend structuring recreational activities
to include both competition and cooperation because that can facilitate
high levels of both intrinsic motivation and performance. I don't
think it supplies to me, because I hate competition or whatever,
but that's probably why I mean, we join up with
(20:04):
rex sports teams because it is fun. I mean, the
competition level is there enough that it's stimulating, but then
you also get the whole cooperative benefits. You get the bond,
you get to do the all hands in high five
cheer thing and poor big tubs of sports strengths on
people I've never done that, I should do that short
(20:28):
circuit our equipment. Um. And this whole competitive structure versus
cooperative structure translates not so surprisingly into the workplace, and
it is interesting to see how they compare in terms
of outcome, because a study published in two thousand three
in the Academy of Management Journal found that competitive structures
(20:51):
enhanced speed and a cooperative one enhances accuracy. Yeah, and
it makes sense if you think about it, because if
you're competing. Again, if if if Chris It and I
had different podcasts and we're recording at the same time,
and that's somehow how the universe work. That we had
to see who could record the best, the best podcast
the fastest. We we would probably be focused, yeah, more
(21:12):
on who would do it the fastest, because so you
would have the Caroline hour, like you said, maybe I'd
have the conger minute minute podcasts out. Yeah. But um,
the cooperative environment is really good for teams with extroverted
and agreeable members. Uh, teams low on these attributes function
(21:32):
better under a competitive structure, which I thought was interesting.
So I guess if you're extroverted friendly, you're more likely
to want to talk about stuff with your coworkers to
reach a solution. So I wonder if someone who swings
a little more introverted like myself, does that mean See,
I don't know, I was I was thinking about that too,
because you don't typically see introverted people like being really
(21:55):
cut throat in the workplace, but they do work more
into pendly. And so yeah, that that whole competitive system
is really good for people who do work independently because
it emphasizes performance differences and it rewards individuals with high performance.
So it can actually the good on the good the
good side, it can promote efficiency. On the bad side,
(22:16):
it can lead individuals to place their goals higher than
those of the organization. Yeah, and then there's the whole
challenge with a cooperative system that works well, like you said,
with people who are extroverted and agreeable, because if you
put them in more of a competitive reward structure, at
least according to this study, they made twice as many mistakes.
So they're rushing around me like, but I want to
talk to you about it. So, essentially, we need some
(22:39):
kind of balance between it all. You know, we can't
be too competitive, we can't be too cooperative. We've gotta
get things done. Essentially, we all need listen, everybody, just
be perfect, no pressure, no pressure at all, you know,
keep those ox oxetse and levels high but not too high. Yeah,
(23:01):
not too high. We don't want to be hugging all
the time. Yeah. But then with testoster, you know, yeah,
low but not too low. So I do want to
ask our listeners, you know, do they consider themselves to
be more cooperators or quote unquote defectors. Are you more
likely to feel like you're getting ahead if you're working
closely with other people? Do you like helping others? Do
(23:21):
you ever feel like you're helping others at the expense
of your own success? And with anyone surprised by the
lack of gender difference in cooperation, Yeah, because a lot
of people stereotypically, you know, anecdotally, people think that women
are inherently more cooperative. Not necessarily true, Yeah, but that
might be used as a misused as an adjective for subservient.
(23:43):
I digress send us an email. Mom. Stuff at Discovery
dot com is where you can send them. Okay, this
is an email from Claire about our Kathy episode. She says,
I'm a fourteen year old enthusiast of comic books and
Liz lemon Boo go clear and read plenty of both
(24:04):
Garfield and Cathy comics in my childhood. I wasn't aware
of the feminist backlash against Kathy until your podcast, and
frankly I disagree with it. Not only do I think
she shouldn't be held to a standard that other comics
are not held to, but if being a prominent woman
cartoonist means that she has to uphold some responsibility of
progressing women and having some sort of big, meaningful character arc,
(24:24):
when Garfield has only gotten fatter and John Lonelier are
the two genders in the media truly equal. I appreciate
feminism and think anyone's involvement in it is a fantastic
thing to do. But to assign someone a role like
that for something as to be blunt mediocre as a
newspaper comic strip, I think is over the top. Well,
I have one here from Madison, and it is in
(24:47):
response to our episode about erotica and which we mentioned
h b D s M themes in erotic literature, and
she writes, I'm a confident woman who incorporates media sum
into my sex life. I don't think safe, sane, consensual
kinky sex among adults is damaging to women. Men can
be subs too. If getting tied up and stuff is
(25:10):
really hot to you, then find someone else who's into it.
I appreciate you guys acknowledge a difference between actual violence
and consensual violent play of b D s M. The
key word here is that b D s M is
play Dan Savage Love, whom describes sex role play as
cops and robbers for adults with your pants off and
orgasm so true. One of my problems with fifty shades
(25:31):
is that it paints a picture that only screwed up,
broken people participate in bed SM. Screwed up broken people
participate in vanilla relationships too. Emotional and physical abuse is
never okay, especially in the kink community. The last thing
that we need on the news is evil kinky people
do something sex crazed and evil. It's a great headline.
Most kinsters I know are extremely polite and will only
(25:53):
whip you if you ask nicely while you're sober. The
bottom really controls what's happening to them, since nothing else
happens without their permission. And I, on a side note,
am blushing. So thank you to Madison for that insight
on the b D s M community, and to everyone
who has written in. We have gotten a lot of
email about our Erotica episode, so much in fact, I
(26:16):
haven't even gotten around Toro to now, so that and
more for the next episode. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot
com is where you can send your letters. You can
also find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
at Mom's Stuff Podcast, and you can head over to
our website during the week to see what we're up to.
(26:36):
It's how Stuff Works dot com for more on this
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