Cooperation and Competition

Cooperation and competition are basic properties of human social life. Whenever an individual interacts with relatives, friends, intimate partners, or business associates, their relationship will normally contain a mixture of cooperative and competitive elements (i.e., mixed-motive interactions). On the one hand, people take pleasure and pride in collaborating with others to achieve mutual goals such as raising children, creating a successful business, or winning a sports match. On the other hand, people often compete with each other to get credits for joint achievements. Cooperation can be broadly defined as a motivation to further joint interests (e.g., doing well together), whereas competition concerns a motivation to maximize personal interests relative to that of others (e.g., doing better than others). Cooperation and competition can be thought of as two contrasting motivational or behavioral strategies employed in situations in which people's outcomes are mutually dependent. They also sometimes refer to the relationship itself. For instance, a cooperative relationship is characterized by a positive correspondence between people's outcomes (win-win relationship), whereas [Page 329]a competitive relationship is characterized by negative correspondence in outcomes (win-lose relationship). This entry investigates the origins of human cooperation and competition and some factors that promote cooperation in social relationships, based on the latest research findings in psychology and adjacent disciplines.

Issues of cooperation and competition have been of interest to behavioral scientists across many disciplines, such as in psychology, economics, biology, political science, and sociology. Researchers often use experimental game methodology to test their hypotheses. Arguably the best-known game is the Prisoner's Dilemma (PDG), a classic example of a social dilemma that pits individual against collective interests. The PDG was developed by scientists in the 1950s. The cover story for the game involved two suspects accused of committing a crime together who are independently offered the choice to testify against each other or to keep silent. The payoffs are such that each one is better off testifying against the other (the competitive or noncooperative choice), but if they both pursue this strategy, they are both worse off than by remaining silent (the cooperative choice). Thus, their best individual strategy results in a deficient collective outcome.