Thursday, August 1, 2013

Evolution Favors Cooperation. Selfish People "Will Eventually Die Out"

A new study from Michigan State University claims that selfishness will eventually disappear as a personality trait and believe evolution favours cooperation. Although selfishness offers short-term gains, selfish people will eventually be phased out because they will be outmanoeuvered by competitors who cooperate to achieve shared goals

Why you SHOULD give away your last chocolate: Selfish people 'will eventually die out' because evolution favours cooperation

Selfishness offers only short-term success compared with teamwork
Scientists believe evolution will eventually kill off selfish people
Theory contradicts previously held notion that selfishness helps evolution

By EMMA INNES

PUBLISHED: 1 August 2013 |

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Winning is not everything, according to a new study that claims selfishness will eventually disappear as a personality trait.

Scientists say that evolution favours cooperation and, while selfishness offers short-term success, selfish people will eventually be phased out because they will be outmaneuvered by competitors who cooperate to achieve shared goals.

A study by evolutionary biologists at Michigan State University used high-powered computing to run hundreds of thousands 'games' to try and work out whether it was selfishness or selflessness that won in the end.

BEING SELFISH MAKE US HAPPY

Being selfish make us happier, according to researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, as long as we can avoid feeling guilty.

Although we are taught the benefits of kindness and altruism, it seems we are happiest when simply told to pursue our own self-interest.

Researchers found the key to contentment is feeling we have no choice but to be selfish. (Alan: Does this sound like a particular band on the American political spectrum?)

Yet the study also found that those who actively choose a selfish path usually have to battle with guilt.

Christoph Adami, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the university, led the study published in the journal Nature Communication.

He said: ‘We found evolution will punish you if you're selfish and mean.

‘For a short time, and against a specific set of opponents some selfish organisms may come out ahead. But selfishness isn't evolutionarily sustainable.’

The discovery conflicts with the widely-held ‘Zero Determinant’ theory that selfishness will keep evolution ticking over.

Professor Adami explained that in evolution there are so many strategies and ways of ‘winning’ it is important to be able to communicate and cooperate in order to come out on top.

Researchers used the prisoner's dilemma game to study cooperation where two people who have committed a crime are arrested and each are offered a deal by police. Grass on your friend and go free while the friend spends six months in jail.

If both prisoners grass, they both get three months in jail. If they both stay silent, they both get one month in jail for a lesser offence.

If the two prisoners get a chance to talk to each other, they can establish trust and are usually more likely to cooperate because then both of them only spend one month in jail. But if they're not allowed to talk, the best strategy is to grass because it guarantees you don't get the longer jail term.

The game allows scientists to study a basic question faced by individuals competing for limited resources - do I act selfishly or do I cooperate?

By learning to work as a team and cooperate with others, scientists believe people will eventually be more successful and communicate more effectively

Cooperating would do the most good for the most individuals, but it might be tempting to be selfish and freeload, letting others do the work and take the risks.

Zero determinant - selfish - ways of beating opponents only worked if the ‘player’ knew who their cooperative opponent was and beat them by exploiting their weaknesses.

But, once all the selfish players had eliminated all of the cooperative players they would have to change their selfish ways in order to beat their own kind.

So being able to cooperate by communicating is central to the winning strategy that will bring long-term success, according to Professor Adami.

Professor Adami said: ‘Communication is critical for cooperation - we think communication is the reason cooperation occurs.’

It is believed that the same set of principles apply to all organisms, from single cell organisms to humans, which is visible in the way people group together in families, tribes and nations.

Professor Adami said that they intend to test their computer-based work on cooperation between yeast cells in future experiments.