A new study to understand when and why people are prepared to cooperate and act in the interest of others, rather than themselves, has been awarded €2.5 million by the European Research Council (ERC).
The Covid-19 pandemic and global warming are two recent examples of issues that require cooperation at a very large scale. A failure to cooperate, that is, to act in one's self-interest rather than the collective interest, could mean a bleak future for humanity, say the researchers.
Professor Simon Gaechter, an expert in the Psychology of Economic Decision Making at the University of Nottingham, is setting out to discover, when are people prepared to play their part in the solution of these fundamental problems?
There are currently numerous behavioural models of cooperation from across many disciplines, such as economics and psychology, however, alone, they typically focus on one narrow aspect of people's behaviour. Professor Gaechter will integrate important insights from across economics, sociology, and moral and social psychology, into a new framework which would mark a major step forward in the creation of a unified science of human cooperation.
The project, "Behavioural Principles of Large-Scale Cooperation", aims to enable future researchers and policy makers to use the framework to understand and test the behavioural effects of possible policy interventions before they are implemented.
The five-year study will combine economic, sociological and psychological aspects of cooperative behaviour into one framework, which will be tested across different cultures.
Some of the behavioural principles which will be combined include:
- Strong reciprocity (conditional cooperation) - the act of exchanging things for mutual benefit