Chimps or children – who is better at sharing resources?
A comparative behavioral research experiment exploring the abilities of chimpanzees and of children to cooperate around a shared resource.
LiteratureBase
An investigation of children’s strategies for overcoming the tragedy of the commons
Koomen, R., & Herrmann, E. (2018). An investigation of children’s strategies for overcoming the tragedy of the commons. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 348–355.
Abstract
- Common-pool resource (CPR) dilemmas are pervasive challenges to overcome. We presented six-year-old children with an experimental CPR paradigm involving a renewable water resource, which children could collect to win individual rewards. To maximize water collection, children had to wait for water to accumulate, without collapsing the resource. We explore the social strategies children used to overcome the dilemma together. Like adults, six-year-old children were challenged by the dilemma: resource sustaining was more successful in a parallel condition in which children worked independently compared with the col- lective CPR condition. However, children were capable of collectively preventing resource collapse by spontaneously generating inclusive rules, equally distributing the rewards and distracting one another from the delay-of-gratification task. Children also learned to sustain the resource longer in repeated interactions with the same partner. Already by the age of six, children are capable of CPR social strategies resembling those of adults.
- Concepts Cooperation, Development of behavior, Social dilemma, Sustainable resource use
- Relevant research methods Behavioral research/Psychology
