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Quality versus quantity of social ties in experimental cooperative networks

Recent studies suggest that allowing individuals to choose their partners can help to maintain cooperation in human social networks; this behaviour can supplement behavioural reciprocity, whereby humans are influenced to cooperate by peer pressure. However, it is unknown how the rate of forming and...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Shirado, Hirokazu, Fu, Feng, Fowler, James H., Christakis, Nicholas A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Pub. Group 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3868237/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24226079
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms3814
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author Shirado, Hirokazu
Fu, Feng
Fowler, James H.
Christakis, Nicholas A.
author_facet Shirado, Hirokazu
Fu, Feng
Fowler, James H.
Christakis, Nicholas A.
author_sort Shirado, Hirokazu
collection PubMed
description Recent studies suggest that allowing individuals to choose their partners can help to maintain cooperation in human social networks; this behaviour can supplement behavioural reciprocity, whereby humans are influenced to cooperate by peer pressure. However, it is unknown how the rate of forming and breaking social ties affects our capacity to cooperate. Here we use a series of online experiments involving 1,529 unique participants embedded in 90 experimental networks, to show that there is a ‘Goldilocks’ effect of network dynamism on cooperation. When the rate of change in social ties is too low, subjects choose to have many ties, even if they attach to defectors. When the rate is too high, cooperators cannot detach from defectors as much as defectors re-attach and, hence, subjects resort to behavioural reciprocity and switch their behaviour to defection. Optimal levels of cooperation are achieved at intermediate levels of change in social ties.
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spelling pubmed-38682372013-12-20 Quality versus quantity of social ties in experimental cooperative networks Shirado, Hirokazu Fu, Feng Fowler, James H. Christakis, Nicholas A. Nat Commun Article Recent studies suggest that allowing individuals to choose their partners can help to maintain cooperation in human social networks; this behaviour can supplement behavioural reciprocity, whereby humans are influenced to cooperate by peer pressure. However, it is unknown how the rate of forming and breaking social ties affects our capacity to cooperate. Here we use a series of online experiments involving 1,529 unique participants embedded in 90 experimental networks, to show that there is a ‘Goldilocks’ effect of network dynamism on cooperation. When the rate of change in social ties is too low, subjects choose to have many ties, even if they attach to defectors. When the rate is too high, cooperators cannot detach from defectors as much as defectors re-attach and, hence, subjects resort to behavioural reciprocity and switch their behaviour to defection. Optimal levels of cooperation are achieved at intermediate levels of change in social ties. Nature Pub. Group 2013-11-14 /pmc/articles/PMC3868237/ /pubmed/24226079 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms3814 Text en Copyright © 2013, Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
spellingShingle Article
Shirado, Hirokazu
Fu, Feng
Fowler, James H.
Christakis, Nicholas A.
Quality versus quantity of social ties in experimental cooperative networks
title Quality versus quantity of social ties in experimental cooperative networks
title_full Quality versus quantity of social ties in experimental cooperative networks
title_fullStr Quality versus quantity of social ties in experimental cooperative networks
title_full_unstemmed Quality versus quantity of social ties in experimental cooperative networks
title_short Quality versus quantity of social ties in experimental cooperative networks
title_sort quality versus quantity of social ties in experimental cooperative networks
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3868237/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24226079
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms3814
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