The psychology of primate cooperation and competition : a call for realigning research agendas
Abstract
Cooperation and competition are two key components of social life. Current research agendas investigating the psychological underpinnings of competition and cooperation in non-human primates are misaligned. The majority of work on competition has been done in the context of theory of mind and deception, while work on cooperation has mostly focused on collaboration and helping. The current impression that theory of mind is not necessarily implicated in cooperative activities and that helping could not be an integral part of competition might therefore be rather misleading. Furthermore, theory of mind research has mainly focused on cognitive aspects like the type of stimuli controlling responses, the nature of representation and how those representations are acquired, while collaboration and helping have focused primarily on motivational aspects like prosociality, common goals and a sense of justice and other-regarding concerns. We present the current state of these two bodies of research paying special attention to how they have developed and diverged over the years. We propose potential directions to realign the research agendas to investigate the psychological underpinnings of cooperation and competition in primates and other animals.
Citation
Schmelz , M & Call , J 2016 , ' The psychology of primate cooperation and competition : a call for realigning research agendas ' , Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. B, Biological Sciences , vol. 371 , no. 1686 , 20150067 . https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0067
Publication
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. B, Biological Sciences
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0962-8436Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2016, Publisher / the Author(s). This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org / https://dx.doi.org/1098/rstb.2015.0067
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