On October 19, 2007, PED Seminar Series Presents

Social Markets, Cooperative Signals, and the Evolution of Competitive Altruism

by Dr. Pat Barclay

Cooperative interactions among humans occur within a social marketplace where people interact more with some individuals than others. When individuals can choose with whom to interact, there is competition to be more generous than others in order to be chosen as a cooperative partner. I will present data from recent studies showing that partner choice can cause people to engage in this “competitive altruism”, as well as some other evidence consistent with the idea that cooperative acts can function as costly signals (“handicaps”) of cooperative intent. This work helps bring costly signaling theory (“handicaps”) and ideas of biological markets into cooperative game theory.

upcoming PED seminars