Mark Edward Grimm
FND 111
15 February 2008
After reading Robert Axelrod’s description of people being selfish in group interactions I am able to relate to my own experiences from within group settings. As he states in his introduction, “people are not angels, and they tend to look after themselves and their own first” (Axelrod 3).
Yet the fact that we interact in group settings on a daily basis does not change people’s attitude. We try to integrate it into education early on, so that in the future people will be able to handle such situations in their workplaces.
We do this so that all can better understand the workings of cooperation. The interaction of cooperation is essentially a two way street. As Axelrod points out it is both how we react to the task of being asked to cooperate, as well as the other party’s reaction. Even if one side is completely willing to cooperate, that doesn’t mean the other is as well.
His question of how cooperation can develop if “incentive to be selfish” exists is especially fitting in the classroom and education setting (Axelrod 3). Each person in a group is particularly concerned with their grade and how the professor will view them considering individual grades will be given out in the end. As Axelrod puts it, each person will “seek their own security through means which challenge the security of others” (4).
If and when someone is willing to cooperate, there is always a catch. They always want there to be equal division of work. Like Axelrod’s example of inviting friends to dinner, human’s expect a return for anything they do. I believe that cooperation is human nature, as McNamara says, “explaining the rise and maintenance of cooperation is central to our understanding of biological systems and human societies.” It may not be completely natural to do things selflessly for others, but the act of doing tasks that support a community and group of people is natural. In Green and Cillessen’s study of children around age six, they discovered that the children were much less interested in a theoretical grade than they were in interacting with others. “There was more variation in the strategies children used to elicit the cooperation of peers than in the strategies they used to gain access to the resource.” I think the basis of human nature can be observed at young ages as the children have not be affected by society.
Kuo found the same in his study of children’s interactions in community. “Through the participation of empowerment mechanism, community youths are guided to develop abilities such as autonomy, independence, and self-discipline. With these abilities, the youth could utilize social capital to impel community growth and group cooperation.”
The professor plays another important role, aside from giving grades, in the cooperation of students. To me the professor fulfills the “central authority” position who “police(s) the situation” (Axelrod 4). Without the professor there to initiate the task under which students must cooperate, there wouldn’t be a situation at all.
As Axelrod transitions and brings up the Prisoner’s Dilemma, I loose his train of thought. I believe it is subliminal cooperation; there is no mental thought in trying to cooperate and play with the person. You are really just trying to trick them through a game. Group cooperation is not a game, it is an interaction. I believe this is an important point to consider in our classroom. That we can in fact cooperate and work together as long as we are willing to interact.
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Works Cited
Axelrod, Robert. The Evolution of Cooperation. Basic Books, 1984. 3-24.
John M McNamara, Zoltan Barta, Lutz Fromhage, Alasdair I Houston. "The coevolution of choosiness and cooperation. " Nature 451.7175 (2008): 189-92. Research Library. ProQuest. Bird Library. 14 Feb. 2008
Jui-Kun Kuo, Cheng-Neng Lai, Chun-Shen Wang. "Social Participation and Life Satisfaction: From Youth's Social Capital Perspective. " Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge 12.2 (2008): 237-242. ABI/INFORM Global. ProQuest. Bird Library. 14 Feb. 2008
Vanessa A Green, Antonius H N Cillessen. "Achievement versus maintenance of control in six-year-old children's interactions with peers: an observational study. " Educational Psychology 28.2 (2008): 1. Research Library. ProQuest. Bird Library. 14 Feb. 2008
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