Dorsa Amir

Thank you for having me on.

Well, it's interesting that you should ask that, actually, because it's a little bit of both.

So my background is in psychology and anthropology, and I've always been really interested in how culture shapes people's behaviors.

And in this paper that recently came out, we really wanted to investigate this exact question.

What aspects of the development of cooperation are consistent across really diverse cultures, including hunter horticulturalists in the Amazon and our very nice neighbors up north in Canada across five different countries?

And what are the aspects that seem to vary?

And we find a little bit of both, actually.

It turns out at younger ages, kids tend to be a bit more self-interested, but as they get older, they really start taking on the norms of their culture.

Well, as the mother of a four-year-old, I can tell you at least my sample size of one at home, that's likely true.

I think, you know, humans are really interesting in that we cooperate at scales that are just unprecedented in the animal kingdom.

We're cooperating right now.

We just met.

Our listeners are cooperating by giving us their attention.

I'm hopefully cooperating by being engaging and polite.

And, you know, I think what's really interesting about a lot of the choices that we make that distinguish us in many ways from non-human primates is that we often make decisions that are costly to ourselves in the short run.

But if everyone does it and we all coordinate, then we're all better off in the long run.

So, for instance, David, if you have four candies in your hand and you're asked to share some with me,

Maybe you just want to keep all of them to yourself.

But if you share, let's say, two of them with me and I benefit from that, then the next time I have four candies, maybe I'll share some with you.

So on the long run, if we play this out many times, these kinds of costly actions can actually be beneficial.