Journal article
The evolution of extreme cooperation via shared dysphoric experiences
H Whitehouse, J Jong, MD Buhrmester, Á Gómez, B Bastian, CM Kavanagh, M Newson, M Matthews, JA Lanman, R McKay, S Gavrilets
Scientific Reports | NATURE PORTFOLIO | Published : 2017
DOI: 10.1038/srep44292
Abstract
Willingness to lay down one's life for a group of non-kin, well documented historically and ethnographically, represents an evolutionary puzzle. Building on research in social psychology, we develop a mathematical model showing how conditioning cooperation on previous shared experience can allow individually costly pro-group behavior to evolve. The model generates a series of predictions that we then test empirically in a range of special sample populations (including military veterans, college fraternity/sorority members, football fans, martial arts practitioners, and twins). Our empirical results show that sharing painful experiences produces "identity fusion" - a visceral sense of oneness..
View full abstractRelated Projects (1)
Grants
Awarded by John Templeton Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
Supported in part by a Large Grant from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (REF RES-060-25-467 0085) (H.W.,J.J.,M.B.,C.K., M.N.,J.L.), an award from the John Templeton Foundation ( H.W.,J.J., M.B.,A.G.,C.K.,J.L.), an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement No. 694986) (H.W., M.B.,C.K. and M.N.), an award from the John Fell OUP Research Fund, 131/072 (H.W. and M.B.) an award from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PSI2015-67754-P) ( A.G.), by the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis through NSF Award EF-0830858, with additional support from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (S.G.), and by the US Army Research Office under grant W911NF-14-1-0637 (SG).