Aleta Pleasant

University of Guelph | UOGuelph · Department of Psychology

Why do we care so much for friends—much more than one might predict from reciprocity alone? According to a recent theory, organisms who cooperate with each other come to have a stake in each other’s well-being: A good cooperator is worth protecting—even anonymously if necessary—so they can be available to cooperate in the future. Here, we present t...

When choosing social partners, people prefer good cooperators (all else being equal). Given this preference, people wishing to be chosen can either increase their own cooperation to become more desirable or suppress others’ cooperation to make them less desirable. Previous research shows that very cooperative people sometimes get punished (“antisoc...