Research on Why People Choose to Cooperate: The Social and Economic Implications

'Social cues to joint actions:
the role of shared goals'

Every society is managed and run by unwritten norms and rules. That is true whether we are consciously aware of them or not. People believe in these unwritten rules because it is what keeps society moving to higher and higher levels of development. This is one of the primary reasons why people are also in general polite, why we follow laws, and why we in general live toward positive healthy goals. 

Not everyone believes in those shared values. Sometimes it is due to misunderstanding and sometimes it is due to erroneous beliefs. This is becoming increasingly more important as we become a diverse society with different types of people. Our shared American values should help guide us to higher levels of development. 

Why does cooperative behavior lead to better societies?

We all must work together to achieve our goals. This is somewhat the same argument on human capital development and how our universal shared values prompt people to be engage in society and contribute in helpful ways. Sometimes there are mixed signals that limit our potential because it creates different rules for different people. 

Working together to me means that we believe in our shared vision for society and we support that as a people through word and deed. We make pledges to our society, and then we must encourage those values in our environment from an organic level, and encourage others to adopt those values. 

When values (people or groups) are not prosocial, then such values (people or groups) need to change so as to have healthy influence. On a very socio-bio level it is up to society to create social and institutional pressure to ensure anti-social elements not working in the best interest of society come into line with helpful behaviors.  

Key points: Societies that share certain values will have higher prosocial behaviors of cooperation. They will also likely be more adaptable and capable of funneling resources to the shared goals.

Possible Benefit to Economics: Since economics is a measure of human behavior our cooperative level would have a big influence on a micro (and then macro) level by encouraging more interaction among different societal demographics in a way that leads to higher long term economic growth. 

I love sociology and philosophy and have since I was a kid so with education we can balance philosophy and science as co methods of analysis and awareness........

Why People Choose to Cooperate, According to Behavioral Science