Cooperation In Groups

This important new book explores the psychological motives that shape the extent and nature of people's cooperative behavior in the groups, organizations and societies to which they belong. Individuals may choose to expend a great deal of effort on promoting the goals and functioning of the group, they may take a passive role, or they may engage in behaviors targeted towards harming the group and its goals. Such decisions have important implications for the group's functioning and viability, and the goal of this book is to understand the factors that influence these choices.

This important new book explores the psychological motives that shape the extent and nature of people's cooperative behavior in the groups, organizations and societies to which they belong. Individuals may choose to expend a great deal of effort on promoting the goals and functioning of the group, they may take a passive role, or they may engage in behaviors targeted towards harming the group and its goals. Such decisions have important implications for the group's functioning and viability, and the goal of this book is to understand the factors that influence these choices.

A famed political scientist's classic argument for a more cooperative world We assume that, in a world ruled by natural selection, selfishness pays. So why cooperate? In The Evolution of Cooperation, political scientist Robert Axelrod seeks to answer this question. In 1980, he organized the famed Computer Prisoners Dilemma Tournament, which sought to find the optimal strategy for survival in a particular game. Over and over, the simplest strategy, a cooperative program called Tit for Tat, shut out the competition. In other words, cooperation, not unfettered competition, turns out to be our best chance for survival. A vital book for leaders and decision makers, The Evolution of Cooperation reveals how cooperative principles help us think better about everything from military strategy, to political elections, to family dynamics.

"Enriching" —Publisher's Weekly "Excellent and illuminating"—Wall Street Journal In the tradition of Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, Nichola Raihani's The Social Instinct is a profound and engaging look at the hidden relationships underpinning human evolution, and why cooperation is key to our future survival. Cooperation is the means by which life arose in the first place. It’s how life progressed through scale and complexity, from free-floating strands of genetic material to nation states. But given what we know about evolution, cooperation is also something of a puzzle. How does cooperation begin, when on a Darwinian level, all the genes in the body care about is being passed on to the next generation? Why do meerkats care for one another’s offspring? Why do babbler birds in the Kalahari form colonies in which only a single pair breeds? And how come some reef-dwelling fish punish each other for harming fish from another species? A biologist by training, Raihani looks at where and how collaborative behavior emerges throughout the animal kingdom, and what problems it solves. She reveals that the species that exhibit cooperative behaviour most similar to our own tend not to be other apes; they are birds, insects, and fish, occupying far more distant branches of the evolutionary tree. By understanding the problems they face, and how they cooperate to solve them, we can glimpse how human cooperation first evolved. And we can also understand what it is about the way we cooperate that makes us so distinctive–and so successful.

Interaction in Cooperative Groups brings together related research from education, developmental psychology, and social psychology in an approach that is both integrative and analytical. Its intent is to provide an understanding of the dynamics of underlying processes that are fundamental to group interaction and its outcomes. The editors have pulled together an impressive array of researchers from diverse areas within psychology and education. Many of the most exciting and currently visible research programmes are represented. This volume is a valuable resource for the professional community and will serve to initiate a long overdue unification of distinct, yet conceptually similar, areas of research.

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2005 in the subject Business economics - Personnel and Organisation, grade: 1,3, University of Applied Management, course: Durchführung eines konstruktivistischen Kommunikations- und Verhaltenstrainings, 21 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The size of a group is a topic with which we each day is unconsciously occupied. If we rise e.g. after a long working day into the overcrowded bus home, then is fast conscious to us: the group is too large. If we cannot master our tasks on the job punctually, we wish ourselves reinforcement. Everyone is each day in a multiplicity of groups: Family, friends, teammate etc. nevertheless: Does it really concern thereby groups? With this question I would like to deal in chapter 2 more in greater detail. There one describes, by which components a group is characterized. Thereupon become in the 3. chapter different group sizes formally and during the process more exactly regarded. All these scenarios suggests that the group has emergent properties which go beyond the individuals who comprise it. Starting from chapter 4 I will be occupied further with the work with smaller groups. The data resulting from it can be used then likewise for the work with larger group - by the organization by sub-groups. At first we will regard, how to use small groups to promote interaction within the class as a whole. This chapter should be an assistance for understanding group phenomena and group processes. Beyond that suggestions given for the line of the group. Finally the also following phenomena are supplemented: how to use groups to syndicate discussions of questions or cases and how to use groups for substential project work. In the last chapter I give a summary and a view to the treated topic.

Would improving the economic, social, and political condition of the world's disadvantaged people slow--or accelerate--environmental degradation? In Inequality, Cooperation, and Environmental Sustainability, leading social scientists provide answers to this difficult question, using new research on the impact of inequality on environmental sustainability. The contributors' findings suggest that inequality may exacerbate environmental problems by making it more difficult for individuals, groups, and nations to cooperate in the design and enforcement of measures to protect natural assets ranging from local commons to the global climate. But a more equal division of a given amount of income could speed the process of environmental degradation--for example, if the poor value the preservation of the environment less than the rich do, or if the consumption patterns of the poor entail proportionally greater environmental degradation than that of the rich. The contributors also find that the effect of inequality on cooperation and environmental sustainability depends critically on the economic and political institutions governing how people interact, and the technical nature of the environmental asset in question. The contributors focus on the local commons because many of the world's poorest depend on them for their livelihoods, and recent research has made great strides in showing how private incentives, group governance, and government policies might combine to protect these resources.