Posted by beckett2 on September 1, 2017, at 17:37:18
In reply to Re: volunteering, posted by baseball55 on August 30, 2017, at 20:35:19
> > I keep coming back to Frank... How is it that co-operation is possible, at all?
> >
> > That's the thing... How could co-operation have evolved? How is it that it managed to evolve at all given the problem of social free-riders (who will take whatever they can get and shirk their responsibilities)?
>
>
> Humans are naturally cooperative and always have lived in groups. We are too weak physically and our children require too long a period of care to have survived outside of groups. Free-riding is a problem that increases with the size and level of interaction of the group. In small groups or groups where everyone's actions are eventually widely known, free-riding is much less of a problem.
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> Economists and psychologists have done a lot of experiments on whether people will cooperate or free-ride under various circumstances. Findings: people who are made to feel that they are "special" or "powerful" in some way are more likely to free-ride. People are more likely to free-ride when they are anonymous and won't participate in future experiments with those with whom they are interacting. An interesting factoid (I am an economist): subjects for these experimental games are usually college students. Economics students who take classes with right-wing, free-market ideologues (and there are a lot of those in economics) are more likely to free-ride.Interesting, and thank you for the food for thought. A hot topic in our country. Then there is Harvey.
poster:beckett2
thread:1094743
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20160906/msgs/1094808.html