The science of getting along

aIt seems like conflicts are happening all around us. The Global Conflict Tracker currently lists 27 conflicts around the world. A survey of 1,490 leaders conducted by the World Economic Forum found that polarization is the biggest societal risk this year. And even Taylor Swift is being targeted over fears that she will sway the 2024 election by supporting President Biden. Why can’t we all get along?

Surprisingly, I think so. The scale and scope of human cooperation is almost ant-like, and conflicts of all kinds are less frequent and less devastating than in the past. We take it for granted, but it’s amazing how people from so many different places around the world can live, work, and even commute on crowded trains and planes in peace. As primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hardy notes in her widely acclaimed book, a plane full of chimpanzees who don’t know each other would be full of dead and maimed monkeys, blood and bodies. Some of the planes will be scattered in the aisles. mother and others.

The mechanisms that maintain cooperation are now well understood. The oldest of these is “inclusive fitness,” or cooperation between families and small tribes through shared genes. Continuous cooperation for mutual benefit, or “direct reciprocity”, is the basis of friendships and networks. This mechanism is also ancient and found throughout the animal kingdom. Mutual benefits are transmitted to our extensive networks through reputation and shared norms, which are the basis of cooperation among people who share religious, political, and other group memberships. This is a uniquely human form of cooperation, facilitated by our ability to gossip and track everyone around us, including strangers.

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However, there is always a risk that conflicts, large or small, will erupt. Fortunately, the science of cooperation reveals what it takes for mere tolerance to become friendship and compassion.for they become true we.

There are three lessons here:

1. Competition helps discover mutual benefits

After all, cooperation flourishes when people expect to achieve more by working with many others than by working alone or in small groups. This is a maxim so ubiquitous in all aspects of life that I call it the “law of cooperation.” This does not mean that all groups will achieve this optimal size. When we start a company, form an alliance, or make peace with an enemy, we depend on whether we will get paid, whether the other person will do their part, and whether they will share the reward fairly. It is not always known in advance. . Cooperation depends not only on actual rewards but also on people’s expectations. Too many groups are caught up in historical grievances, false beliefs about the other side, or what they can gain by working together. Competition is what breaks us out of this suboptimal trap.

In the 11th century, most trade was facilitated by known locals or based on trust through family ties. But competition brought experimentation. Groups like Maghribi’s Jewish merchants sought to create mechanisms for sharing reputations and informal enforcement in their communities. Their experiments succeeded in extending cooperation and networks of trust and trade beyond family ties to people across the Mediterranean, from Spain to Sicily, Egypt and Palestine.

Bilateral trade reduces the likelihood of war because of the perceived mutual benefits. You don’t want to fight your factory unless you have another factory. Similarly, during the Industrial Revolution, knowledge sharing enabled cooperation. Industrialization and the availability of vast new energy sources in the form of fossil fuels has led to large-scale factories, the expansion of education to create the workforce for those factories, and the formation of coalitions and corporations that compete for the spoils. We trained workers to do the same.

2. Cooperation undermines cooperation.

Corruption and civil war are often thought of as puzzles, but they are less mysterious than well-functioning institutions and peace. Corruption, often referred to as nepotism or nepotism, is the oldest and most stable form of cooperation: the ties that bind us to our families, friends, and networks. My colleagues and I are exploring the possibility of “direct reciprocity,” in effect how bribery undermines functioning organizations, and how cultural exposure to bribery increases its prevalence. Proven experimentally. In the West, these often manifest as lobbyists, special interest groups, and revolving doors. The most effective anti-corruption strategies undermine these cooperation mechanisms, such as banning revolving doors and creating cooling-off periods, weakening alliances and preventing people from working together to undermine the system. It is something.

In The Strangest People in the World, Joseph Henrich writes that the Catholic Church’s ban on cousin marriage and other reforms to European family practices that began in the 4th century weakened European tribes and led to modern-day It is argued that it created the nuclear family. This weakened nepotism and set the stage for non-family enterprises and more successful liberal democracies in Europe. The values ​​created by that change, such as individualism, are spreading around the world through education, urbanization, and jobs that separate people from their families.

3. Perception creates reality

Although the US economy is currently performing well, there is a lag in the rise in consumer sentiment. The perception of deteriorating living standards has led to a zero-sum perception, which is understandable given the high interest rates and rising prices of a variety of products, from essential goods and services to housing. Our zero-sum psychology makes us believe that there is never enough for everyone. As a result, political polarization increases as people become dependent on their immediate networks at the expense of others. Whatever the reality, even the perception of a zero-sum situation can create that zero-sum reality if people choose not to cooperate with each other.

Well-intentioned attempts for us to get along or to redress past injustices can reify subgroups at the expense of the larger group, further dividing us. The ethnic and racial boxes we check when applying for colleges, scholarships, and jobs embody categories such as African American, Asian American, Latino, and white. These categories are selective. They obscure other potential unifying groups. Children of wealthy non-white immigrants, such as former Harvard University President Claudine Gay, the daughter of wealthy Haitian immigrants, are more likely than their wealthy white colleagues to check the same boxes at Black Wal-Mart. Do you have a lot in common with your employees? Is focusing on ancestry and ignoring other forms of privilege the best way to close the racial wealth gap?

Evolutionary theory and experimental evidence reveal that race is not a natural category. We have evolved alongside people similar to us. And the social categories we create and reify influence our perceptions of who is who. they and who we. Combined with zero-sum perceptions, this is a recipe for polarization and conflict.

The science of cooperation reveals that we can get along, but we can easily slip back into conflict. The danger today is that the impact of potential conflict is greater than ever, as the scale of cooperation reaches hundreds of millions, if not billions. By revealing the win-win through cooperation for mutual benefit, undermining subgroup differences rather than reifying them, and talking to each other across the divide, what do we share and work together on? It reminds us of what we can accomplish.