Cooperation

We as human beings have many networks and systems within us and all around us; these are built up by self-regulating individuals or organisms that choose when best to cooperate.

When should a person cooperate and when should a person be selfish? (Axelrod, 1984, pp xi-xiv).

I feel that every human being cooperates for some kind of gain, this maybe emotional, physical or even something that we cannot explain, abstract. We will always act with self interest and should.

Firstly I want to define what the word ‘Self-interest'' it implies to focus on the needs of oneself, knowing what will be gained from cooperating.

Secondly the dictionary definition of ‘Selfishness’ denotes an excessive (subjective) or exclusive (hypothetical) concern with oneself; and as such it exceeds mere self interest or self concern. In that it necessarily connotes a disregard for others, it is beyond the act of placing one's own needs or desires above the needs or desires of others (self interest). (Wikipedia, Selfishness).

Psychologist and primatologist Frans De Waal takes issue with those who equate ‘selfishness’ with ‘self-serving.’ He argues that ‘Selfishness implies the intention to serve oneself, hence knowledge of what one stands to gain from a particular behavior’. (Frans, 2009, p13).

Psychological egoism is the view that humans are always motivated by self-interest even in what seem to be acts of altruism. (Wikipedia, Psychological egoism).

Within my dance education networks, I aid the less experienced because it makes me feel good about myself and I hope that one day it will be reciprocated, is this not then a self-serving act? I recently had an interview, where I was offered a teaching job that the interviewer could no longer commit to. This at first glance seems like a selfless act, however she gained the knowledge that her students were going to be taught by a fully qualified dance teacher and she had managed to make her departure with the company amicable, because she had saved them the trouble of having to find another teacher. We had both cooperated with self interest.

Within Axelrod (1984) Prisoner’s Dilemma game theory there are four possible types of behaviour Selfishness, Altruism, Spite, and Cooperation. Cooperation is helping oneself and helping someone else. Well surly if this is the case we would all cooperate all of the time, what are the circumstances that prevent me from cooperating within a professional network?  I tend to stop cooperating with someone when the network has reached maximum gain, or when someone stops cooperating with me, TIT-FOR-TAT.  The strategy TIT-FOR-TAT starts with cooperation with both players gaining. I believe they are also gaining and building trust, so when a player defects, it break this, creating a TIT-FOR-TAT pattern.

Stephanie states in her blog ‘I know of several actors who, knowing that they are not right for a role, have suggested a friend, who ended up getting the job!’ My question is would they have suggested an actor if both were right for the job? Of course not as Stephanie mentions this increases the competition. Informing a fellow actor for a part has built trust within the network and increased the actors chance of this act being reciprocated, making this a self serving act.

If you divided the world into humans that were self serving and those that were not who would survive? Ultimately the self-serving.

I don’t feel it is necessarily a bad thing to cooperate with ones interests as a source, everyone gains within the network. It is only when someone becomes ‘selfish’ trying to get ahead that the network as whole losses out. Initially this aids the individual in progressing but prevents any future development within the network. There will always be someone that crosses the fine line between self-serving and selfish because as humans we all have our own levels of what is acceptable.

References

Durrant, A. (2010) The networked professional reader.

Axelrod, R. (1984) The Evolution of Cooperation. London: Sage.

De Waal, Frans (2009). Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved: Princeton University Press.