Bowles, S: Cooperative Species

Preface xi Chapter 1: A Cooperative Species 1 Chapter 2: The Evolution of Altruism in Humans 8 2.1 Preferences, Beliefs, and Constraints 9 2.2 Social Preferences and Social Dilemmas 10 2.3 Genes, Culture, Groups, and Institutions 13 2.4 Preview 18 Chapter 3: Social Preferences 19 3.1 Strong Reciprocity Is Common 20 3.2 Free-Riders Undermine Cooperation 22 3.3 Altruistic Punishment Sustains Cooperation 24 3.4 Effective Punishment Depends on Legitimacy 26 3.5 Purely Symbolic Punishment Is Effective 29 3.6 People Punish Those Who Hurt Others 31 3.7 Social Preferences Are Not Irrational 32 3.8 Culture and InstitutionsMatter 33 3.9 Behavior Is Conditioned on Group Membership 35 3.10 People Enjoy Cooperating and Punishing Free-Riders 38 3.11 Social Preferences in Laboratory and Natural Settings 39 3.12 Competing Explanations 42 Chapter 4: The Sociobiology of Human Cooperation 46 4.1 Inclusive Fitness and Human Cooperation 48 4.2 Modeling Multi-level Selection 52 4.3 EquilibriumSelection 57 4.4 Reciprocal Altruism 59 4.5 Reciprocal Altruism in Large Groups 63 4.6 Reputation: Indirect Reciprocity 68 4.7 Altruism as a Signal of Quality 71 4.8 Positive Assortment 72 4.9 Mechanisms and Motives 75 Chapter 5: Cooperative Homo economicus 79 5.1 Folk Theorems and Evolutionary Dynamics 80 5.2 The Folk Theorem with Imperfect Public Information 83 5.3 The Folk Theorem with Private Information 86 5.4 Evolutionarily Irrelevant Equilibria 87 5.5 Social Norms and Correlated Equilibria 89 5.6 The Missing Choreographer 90 Chapter 6: Ancestral Human Society 93 6.1 Cosmopolitan Ancestors 95 6.2 Genetic Evidence 99 6.3 PrehistoricWarfare 102 6.4 The Foundations of Social Order 106 6.5 The Crucible of Cooperation 110 Chapter 7: The Coevolution of Institutions and Behaviors 111 7.1 Selective Extinction 115 7.2 Reproductive Leveling 117 7.3 Genetic Differentiation between Groups 120 7.4 Deme Extinction and the Evolution of Altruism 121 7.5 The Australian Laboratory 123 7.6 The

Samuel Bowles heads the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute and teaches economics at the University of Siena. Herbert Gintis holds faculty positions at the Santa Fe Institute, Central European University, and the University of Siena.

The achievement of Bowles and Gintis is to have put together from the many disparate sources of evidence a story as plausible as any we're likely to get in the present state of behavioural sciences of how human beings came to be as co-operative as they are. -- W.G. Runciman London Review of Books In A Cooperative Species, economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis update their ideas on the evolutionary origins of altruism. Containing new data and analysis, their book is a sustained and detailed argument for how genes and culture have together shaped our ability to cooperate... By presenting clear models that are tied tightly to empirically derived parameters, Bowles and Gintis encourage much-needed debate on the origins of human cooperation. -- Peter Richerson Nature An outstanding book that presents an important contribution and quite simply raises the scientific standard associated with the difficult and contentious problem of how human altruism evolved. -- Charles Efferson Economic Journal A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution states a clearly articulated gene-culture coevolution explanation for why we are a cooperative species. It is a read that will stretch readers' minds a bit, and I think it is an eminently valuable read... I await with eagerness the next time Bowles and Gintis are out cooperating again. -- Jonathan D. Springer PsycCRITIQUES [T]he authors' systematic and mathematical approach will appeal to any reader seriously interested in learning about alternative theories of adaptive altruism, and their treatment of cultural inheritance using population-genetic models is first-rate. Although this book will by no means settle the debate surrounding the evolutionary origin of altruism, it is a worthy addition and is well worth reading. -- P. William Hughes Journal of Economic Issues Bowles and Gintis are clearly not short of ideas. The attention they draw to the role of conflict and coordinated punishment in the evolution of our