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(1 - 4 of 4)
- Title
- Evolution of cooperation in the light of information theory
- Creator
- Mirmomeni, Masoud
- Date
- 2015
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
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Cooperation is ubiquitous in different biological levels and is necessary for evolution to shape the life and create new forms of organization. Genes cooperate in controlling cells; cells efficiently collaborate together to produce cohesive multi-cellular organisms; members of insect colonies and animal clans cooperate in protecting the colony and providing food. Cooperation means that members of a group bear a cost, c, for another individuals to earn a benefit, b. While cooperators of the...
Show moreCooperation is ubiquitous in different biological levels and is necessary for evolution to shape the life and create new forms of organization. Genes cooperate in controlling cells; cells efficiently collaborate together to produce cohesive multi-cellular organisms; members of insect colonies and animal clans cooperate in protecting the colony and providing food. Cooperation means that members of a group bear a cost, c, for another individuals to earn a benefit, b. While cooperators of the group help others by paying a cost, defectors receive the benefits of this altruistic behavior without providing any service in return to the group. To address this dilemma, here we use a game theoretic approach to model and study evolutionary dynamics that can lead to unselfish behavior. Evolutionary game theory is an approach to study frequency-dependent systems. In evolutionary games the fitness of individuals depends on the relative abundance of the various types in the population. We explore different strategies and different games such as iterated games between players with conditional strategies, multi player games, and iterated games between fully stochastic strategies in noisy environments to find the necessity conditions that lead to cooperation. Interestingly, we see that in all of these games communication is the key factor for maintaining cooperation among selfish individuals. We show that communication and information exchange is necessary for the emergence of costly altruism, and to maintain cooperation in the group there should be minimum rate of communication between individuals. We quantify this minimum amount of information exchange, which is necessary for individuals to exhibit cooperative behavior, by defining a noisy communication channel between them in iterated stochastic games and measuring the communication rate (in bits) during the break down of cooperation.
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- Title
- Does it pay to be nice? : the effects of expectancy violations, norm transgressions, and reciprocity opportunity on attraction and reciprocity toward a favor-giver
- Creator
- El-Alayli, Amani G.
- Date
- 2000
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Title
- Sender trait altruism and deception in feedback situations
- Creator
- Clare, David
- Date
- 2011
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
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This study hypothesized that sender trait altruism would be positively related to the accuracy with which receivers of feedback messages from senders would be able to judge the quality of the performance that the sender had evaluated. A quasi-experiment was conducted wherein a feedback sender's trait altruism was measured, the sender was exposed to a performance of varying quality, the sender produced a taped feedback message about the performance, and then samples of receivers were asked to...
Show moreThis study hypothesized that sender trait altruism would be positively related to the accuracy with which receivers of feedback messages from senders would be able to judge the quality of the performance that the sender had evaluated. A quasi-experiment was conducted wherein a feedback sender's trait altruism was measured, the sender was exposed to a performance of varying quality, the sender produced a taped feedback message about the performance, and then samples of receivers were asked to judge the quality of the performance reviewed using the taped message. The data were not consistent with the hypothesis and suggested that perhaps there is a negative relationship. Receiver accuracy in judging performance quality was positively related to sender trait extroversion and this relationship was moderated by the sender's trait altruism. Theoretical and methodological limitations of the study are discussed.
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- Title
- Altruism, risk, energy development and the human-animal relationship
- Creator
- Whitley, Cameron Thomas
- Date
- 2017
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
-
Research shows that humans form relationships with animals that alter social, psychological and biological processes. However, within environmental decision-making and social psychological research, the importance of human-animal relationships has not been thoroughly explored. This dissertation extends social distance theories to include human-animal relationships and utilizes environmental values, particularly altruism, in a causal chain to assess how individuals perceive the risk high...
Show moreResearch shows that humans form relationships with animals that alter social, psychological and biological processes. However, within environmental decision-making and social psychological research, the importance of human-animal relationships has not been thoroughly explored. This dissertation extends social distance theories to include human-animal relationships and utilizes environmental values, particularly altruism, in a causal chain to assess how individuals perceive the risk high volume horizontal drilling hydraulic fracturing (HVHHF) poses to animals. HVHHF is an ideal lens to investigate this topic because this technology puts animals at substantial risk of harm and creates environments that simultaneously affect humans and animals. In Chapter 1 I conduct a thorough content analysis of peer-reviewed HVHHF articles to examine how animals and human-animal relationships are represented. The analysis demonstrates that existing research seldom acknowledges animals' inherent value, instead focusing almost exclusively on the use of animals as sentinels for potential human health risks. Furthermore, there are no social science articles assessing the impacts of HVHHF on animals or human-animal relationships. This chapter serves as a call for additional research. I use Chapters 2 and 3 to respond to this call, exploring the social and psychological drivers of perceptions of the risk HVHHF poses to humans and animals. In Chapter 2 I use an experimental survey design to extend construal level theory of psychological distance (CLT) to interspecies relationships and test whether social distance between species influences human perceptions of HVHHF risk to animals. Multivariate regression results show that framing HVHHF risk in terms of animals can alter perceptions of HVHHF risk to animals, but that framing risk across different animal groups has varied impacts. This study makes a significant theoretical contribution to the risk literature by demonstrating the importance of including interspecies relationships in CLT. It also has practical implications for organizations interested in gaining public support for policies that address HVHHF harms to animals. Chapter 3 picks up where Chapter 2 leaves off, continuing to investigate how people perceive the risk HVHHF poses to animals. I draw on the environmental values literature (focusing on altruism) to evaluate the causal link between values and perception of risk to animals. The results from structural equation modeling and logistic regression, show that those who adhere to altruistic values (both towards animals and the biosphere) perceive higher risks of hydraulic fracturing to all species. However, decreased social distance between humans and companion animals mediates this relationship, suggesting that decreased social distance in human-animal relationships is an extension of altruism. The findings have important implications for understanding how human-animal relationships influence risk perceptions and for environmental and animal rights movements pursuing policies that promote animal wellbeing. Finally, in the conclusion I connect my findings, address avenues for future research, and discuss policy implications.
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