Altruism, Prosociality, and Cooperation in Experimental Social Dilemmas

Abstract

The study of altruistic, prosocial, and cooperative behavior is a very broad area of research that has occupied scholars from various disciplines for a long time. In sociology, the terms “altruism,” “prosociality,” and “cooperation” are most often used to describe certain behaviors based on their consequences. An altruistic act is an action or a choice that produces benefits to others, even at a cost to oneself, without any implication regarding the motives to perform the act. Cooperation refers to actions that prioritize the achievement of collective goals, foregoing the pursuit of narrow self-interest. Prosociality generally takes a broader meaning that may include both altruistic and cooperative acts. Altruistic, prosocial, and cooperative behaviors are typically defined without referring to the motives to perform the behavior, because the existence of altruistic motives and the mechanisms that trigger them are a crucial part of what scholars are trying to explain. The main causal explanations of altruistic behavior are based on both exogenous factors, such as social embeddedness and opportunity for future interactions, and endogenous factors, such as social or moral norms. Exogenous factors typically include calculative elements based on potential future consequences of altruistic acts. On the contrary, altruistic acts triggered by endogenous factors, like internalized norms or emotions, may be performed regardless of the outcome. As the ability to act altruistically toward strangers and cooperate in groups on a very large scale is unique to humans, the origin of norms and emotions that support cooperation is a fundamental issue in the study of the evolution of human behavior.