Monday, September 24, 2012

Cooperation comes easily but thinking makes us selfish

Cooperation comes easily but thinking makes us selfish:
A set of ten studies suggests that intuition promotes cooperation, but rational thought turns us selfish.
Are humans instinctively cooperative or are we naturally selfish?  This question has been a topic of inquiry for thousands of years, argued over by philosophers, psychologists, and theologians. Most recently, a group of researchers from Harvard University weighed in on the question in this week’s issue of Nature.
The scientists conducted ten studies on cooperation to examine its cognitive basis in humans. The goal of this set of experiments was to determine whether we are predisposed to selfishness but become more generous once we are given time to think about it, or whether people are naturally cooperative, with selfishness only creeping in when we reflect more on our options. Taken together, the set of studies suggest that we are instinctively generous, but rational thought may make us greedier.
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