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Understanding cooperation through fitness interdependence

Nature Human Behaviour volume 2, pages 429–431 (2018)Cite this article

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Some acts of human cooperation are not easily explained by traditional models of kinship or reciprocity. Fitness interdependence may provide a unifying conceptual framework, in which cooperation arises from the mutual dependence for survival or reproduction, as occurs among mates, risk-pooling partnerships and brothers-in-arms.

Despite decades of progress in psychology, anthropology and evolutionary biology, many questions remain about human sociality. Why do people often help others without expecting to get anything in return? When is cooperation an evolutionarily viable strategy? Do our emotions in close relationships track how entwined our evolutionary interests are? Here we propose that fitness interdependence may be an important first step towards unifying disparate literatures on cooperation, identifying exciting new avenues for research across many disciplines, and, thus, solving many of the remaining puzzles of human sociality. We provide a definition of fitness interdependence, explain how it applies to the evolution of cooperation and describe how the study of fitness interdependence can advance interdisciplinary work on human cooperation.

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Fig. 1: Interdependence is pervasive in human societies and it often includes mutual dependence for survival and/or reproduction.
Fig. 2: Fitness interdependence can be conceptualized as ‘rising and falling together’ in terms of success in replicating genes.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank all the participants in the Fitness Interdependence Workshop held at Arizona State University in February 2017, including G. Roberts and H. Wasielewski who provided valuable feedback on this manuscript. We also acknowledge the support of the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University and the Human Generosity Project. We also thank S. Brown for valuable comments and feedback on this manuscript. The work of A.A. and L.C. was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (grant number 46724) and the work of D.B. was supported by European Research Council Starting Grant (number 635356). Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Athena Aktipis, Jessica D. Ayers, Cristina Baciu & Andrés Muñoz

  2. Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Lee Cronk

  3. Department of Emergency Medicine, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Joe Alcock

  4. Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

    Daniel Balliet

  5. Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Amy M. Boddy

  6. Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Oliver Scott Curry

  7. Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA

    Jaimie Arona Krems

  8. Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Daniel Sullivan

  9. Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Daniel Sznycer

  10. Department of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, USA

    Gerald S. Wilkinson

  11. Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Pamela Winfrey

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  1. Athena Aktipis
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Correspondence to Athena Aktipis.

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Aktipis, A., Cronk, L., Alcock, J. et al. Understanding cooperation through fitness interdependence. Nat Hum Behav 2, 429–431 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0378-4

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