Scribd
Upload
5 views16 pages

What Matters For Cooperation

The document explores factors influencing cooperation in wolves, emphasizing the role of social factors such as emotional states and affiliations over cognitive abilities. It presents various methods to measure cooperation, including tests for inhibitory control and prosocial behavior. The findings support the emotional bookkeeping hypothesis and suggest that the history of relationships significantly impacts cooperative behavior.

Uploaded by

lok.fez.lob
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
5 views16 pages

What Matters For Cooperation

The document explores factors influencing cooperation in wolves, emphasizing the role of social factors such as emotional states and affiliations over cognitive abilities. It presents various methods to measure cooperation, including tests for inhibitory control and prosocial behavior. The findings support the emotional bookkeeping hypothesis and suggest that the history of relationships significantly impacts cooperative behavior.

Uploaded by

lok.fez.lob
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 16

WHAT MATTERS FOR

COOPERATION?
RACHEL DALE, SARAH MARSHALL-PESCINI & FRIEDERIKE RANGE
INTRODUCTION

• Cooperation in socially complex species.


• For example: wolves.
• Hypothesis of emotional bookkeeping
• Cooperation without complex cognition.
• Emotional states associated with partners in social exchanges.
• Long-term tracking of reciprocal exchanges.
FACTORS OF COOPERATIVE BEHAVIOUR
• Social factors:
• Emotional states with specific partners
• Affiliation
• Dominance
• Tolerance
• Non-social factors:
• Inhibitory control
• Inhibition of the impulse to act “selfishly”.
• Causal understanding
• Persistence
• Learning speed
INTERACTIONS IN COOPERATIVE BEHAVIOUR

• Coordination
• Benefits to two individuals acting in the same time and space.
• Prosocial behaviour
• Voluntary action that benefits another
• Inequity aversion
• Negative reaction to an inequitable outcome
PREDICTIONS

• Dyads with stronger affiliative bonds (better associations) would be better coordinating, more prosocial
and less inequity averse
• Dyads closer in rank coordinating more successfully.
• Dominant individuals being more inequity averse.
• Dominance will have less effect than affiliation and tolerance.
• The more inhibitory control the better perform cooperating in the loose-string task, more prosocial
responses and averse to inequity.
• With better causal understanding wolves would be better with coordination.
METHODS

• 15 wolves used in the study from the Wolf


Science Center (Austria)
• Receive training or participate in daily testing
• The WSC provided observations of social
interactions.
SOCIAL FACTORS

• Affiliation
• Per each dyad: bidirectional frequency of affiliative behaviours divided by
the observation time (hour).
• Rank distance
• David’s score: to characterize the dyadic dominance relationship between
the two individuals in a specific dyad.
• Tolerance
• Data taken from another study about food sharing in wolves.
• The time a dyad spent eating the same bowl peacefully.
NON-SOCIAL FACTORS

• Inhibition (also motivation, flexibility and perseveration)


• Buzzer test:
• Press a buzzer instead of manipulate a box with visible reward.
• Box test:
• Take a food reward of a box surrounding the box.

Fig. 2. Setup for buzzer test Fig. 2. Setup in the box test (Brucks, et
(Brucks, et al., 2019) al., 2017)
• Middle-cup test:
• Choosing two of three transparent cups with rewards in two different conditions.
• Reversal learning test:
• Two phases: first, object A has a reward but no object B, in the second the object B has the
reward and not A.

Fig. 2. Setup for buzzer test (Brucks, Fig. 2. Setup for buzzer test (Brucks,
et al., 2019) et al., 2019)
• Causal understanding
• Using physical cues the wolves choose object to obtain rewards.
• Persistence
• Time an individual interact with a ball with food impossible to obtain.
Loose-string paradigm
• Two individuals need to pull the end of a rope to bring a baited tray located on the other side of a fence.
• This require coordination in space and time, the depend measure
• Six sessions of six trials each were conducted per dyad.
• Prosociality’s measure:
• Touch screen apparatus.
• Touching one symbol with the nose rewarded
the partner’s enclosure (giving).
• The other symbol don’t provide any reward
(control).
• Number of giving trials performed was taken
as the measure.

Inequity aversion’s measure:


• The wolf press a buzzer with its paw to
receive a reward.
• Trials alternated between subject and
partner.
• The distribution of the reward varied to
be either equitable between the partner
or not.
RESULTS
DISCUSSION

• There’s an overwhelming effect of social factors in the three cooperation-related task.


• Results support the emotional bookkeeping hypothesis.
• These results corroborate those in humans and other species (chimpanzees, macaque, ravens, etc.)*.
• Research about cooperation should consider the history of relationship between the individuals.
• Sex may have an effect in coordination but there isn’t enough data.
DISCUSSION

• Dyads closer together in rank were more successful at coordinating.


• Inequity aversion dependent on the relative hierarchical position of the subject to their partner.
• Wolves with higher success in coordination task tended less persistent.
• Subjects prefer to hold back and work at the level of their partners.
• Individuals with a better understood were more averse to the inequitable situations.
• The inequity aversion is influenced by inhibitory control.
• Inhibition control and inequity aversion: in contradiction with the other study with non-humans (dogs).
• Wolves are much faster at understanding the task.
REFERENCES

• Brucks, D., Marshall-Pescini, & Range, F. (2019). Dogs and wolves do not differ in their inhibitory control
abilities in a non-social test battery. Animal Cognition. 22(2019): pp. 1-15.
• Brucks, D. et al. (2017). Measures of Dogs’ Inhibitory Control Abilities Do Not Correlate across Task.
Frontiers in Physchology. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00849.
• Dale, R., Marshall-Pescini, S. & Range, F. (2020). What matters for cooperation? The importance of
social relationship over cognition. Scientific reports, 10(1): pp. 1-14.

You might also like