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Author (up) Gardner, A., West, S. A.
Title Cooperation and Punishment, Especially in Humans Type Journal Article
Year 2004 Publication The American Naturalist Abbreviated Journal Americ. Natur.
Volume 164 Issue 6 Pages 753-764
Keywords kin selection, neighbor-modulated fitness, repression of
Abstract Explaining altruistic cooperation is one of the greatest

challenges faced by sociologists, economists, and evolutionary biologists.

The problem is determining why an individual would carry

out a costly behavior that benefits another. Possible solutions to this

problem include kinship, repeated interactions, and policing. Another

solution that has recently received much attention is the threat

of punishment. However, punishing behavior is often costly for the

punisher, and so it is not immediately clear how costly punishment

could evolve. We use a direct (neighbor-modulated) fitness approach

to analyze when punishment is favored. This methodology reveals

that, contrary to previous suggestions, relatedness between interacting

individuals is not crucial to explaining cooperation through punishment.

In fact, increasing relatedness directly disfavors punishing

behavior. Instead, the crucial factor is a positive correlation between

the punishment strategy of an individual and the cooperation it

receives. This could arise in several ways, such as when facultative

adjustment of behavior leads individuals to cooperate more when

interacting with individuals who are more likely to punish. More

generally, our results provide a clear example of how the fundamental

factor driving the evolution of social traits is a correlation between

social partners and how this can arise for reasons other than genealogical

kinship.
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Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 341
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