essay on cooperation leads to success

Student Essays

Essay on Cooperation – Need & Importance of Cooperation in Life

Cooperation is the human virtue to work together, to cooperate in dealing with the day to day challenges of life. The very concept of human society and the growth of civilizations is based upon the basic tenets of mutual cooperation. As, mankind can never live without the cooperation of fellow beings. This Essay on Cooperation talks about its meaning, concept and importance of cooperation in Life and how cooperation is essential for students to surmount the life challenges

Essay on Cooperation | Need, Value & Importance of Cooperation in Life for Students

Cooperation refers to the process of working jointly with others towards a common goal. It is an essential skill that helps in achieving success both professionally and personally. In this essay, we will discuss the importance of cooperation in life.

Cooperation can be defined as the process of working jointly with others towards a common goal. It is an essential skill that helps in achieving success both professionally and personally. Cooperation involves communication, teamwork, and compromise. It is necessary in order to achieve goals and resolve conflicts.

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Cooperation is important in Life because 

• Helps to achieve goals: Cooperation helps people to work together towards a common goal. This can be done by sharing ideas and working as a team.
• Helps to resolve conflicts: Cooperation can help to resolve conflicts between people. By working together, people can understand each other’s point of view and find a solution that is agreeable to all.
• Helps to build relationships: Cooperation helps to build strong relationships between people. When people work together, they develop trust and respect for each other. This can help to strengthen relationships in both personal and professional settings.
• Improves communication: Cooperation helps to improve communication between people. By working together, people are able to share ideas and communicate effectively. This can help to resolve misunderstandings and improve team morale.
• Helps to learn new skills: Cooperation helps people to learn new skills. By working with others, people are able to share their knowledge and learn from each other. This can help them to develop new skills and become more productive members of the team.

Importance of Cooperation for Students

For students, cooperation is essential for academic success. In order to do well in school, students need to work together and cooperate with their classmates. This can be done by sharing ideas, helping each other with homework, and working as a team. Cooperation is also important in the workplace. In order to be successful, employees need to be able to work together and cooperate with their coworkers. This can be done by sharing ideas, working as a team, and resolving conflicts.

Cooperation is also important in personal relationships. In order to have successful relationships, people need to be able to cooperate with each other. This can be done by communicating effectively, compromising, and working together towards a common goal in life.

Therefore, cooperation is an essential skill that helps in achieving success both professionally and personally. It is important because it helps to achieve goals, resolve conflicts, build relationships, improve communication, and learn new skills.

Essay on Cooperation & Competition:

The concepts of cooperation and competition are central to our daily lives, influencing the way we interact with others. From a young age, we are taught both the importance of working together towards a common goal and the drive to succeed over others. These two seemingly opposing forces play critical roles in shaping our society and ultimately determine its success.

Cooperation: Building Stronger Bonds

Cooperation can be defined as the act of individuals working together towards a common goal or purpose. It requires mutual understanding, respect, and trust between parties involved. In today’s world, where diversity is celebrated, cooperation has become essential in creating cohesive communities and promoting social harmony.

One of the primary benefits of cooperation is that it allows individuals to combine their strengths and resources, leading to more significant achievements than if they were working alone. In a cooperative environment, individuals complement each other’s skills and compensate for each other’s weaknesses. This not only increases efficiency but also promotes learning and personal growth.

Additionally, cooperation plays a crucial role in building strong relationships between individuals. When people work together towards a common goal, they develop a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose, which leads to stronger bonds. Whether it is in the workplace or within families and friendships, cooperation fosters trust and understanding, creating a more harmonious society.

Competition: Driving Progress

Competition can be defined as the process of striving for success or superiority over others through one’s performance or abilities. While competition is often viewed in a negative light, it is an essential aspect of human nature that drives progress and innovation.

When individuals compete with each other, they are driven to improve their skills and abilities to surpass their opponents. This leads to continuous growth and development, pushing individuals to reach their full potential. Competition can also be a source of motivation for individuals, encouraging them to work harder and achieve better results.

In the business world, competition drives companies to develop new products and services, leading to economic growth and job creation. Similarly, in sports or academics, healthy competition fosters excellence and pushes individuals to strive for success.

Striking a Balance between Cooperation & Competition

As with any two opposing forces, cooperation and competition must be balanced for society’s overall benefit. While cooperation promotes social harmony and strong relationships, competition drives progress and innovation. A society that solely values one over the other will struggle to thrive.

In today’s world, it is crucial to strike a balance between cooperation and competition. Individuals must learn to work together towards common goals while also striving for personal growth and success. This balance can lead to a harmonious and progressive society where individuals support each other’s achievements while continuously pushing boundaries.

In conclusion, cooperation and competition are two essential concepts that shape our society. While cooperation fosters strong relationships and allows us to achieve more significant feats together, competition drives progress and motivates individuals towards success. Striking a balance between these two forces is crucial for creating a harmonious and thriving community.

Short Essay on Cooperation:

Cooperation is an essential aspect of human society, which involves individuals or groups working together towards a common goal. It plays a significant role in our daily lives and is vital for the overall development of any community.

One of the primary benefits of cooperation is that it promotes unity among people. When individuals come together to work cooperatively, they tend to focus on their similarities rather than differences, creating a sense of togetherness and camaraderie. This leads to the formation of strong social bonds, which are crucial for building a harmonious society.

Moreover, cooperation also leads to increased efficiency and productivity. By collaborating with each other, individuals can share their knowledge and skills, complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses. This not only makes tasks easier to accomplish but also ensures better results. In a society where people cooperate with each other, there is a higher chance of advancement and progress.

Cooperation also plays a vital role in resolving conflicts and promoting peace. When people work together towards a common goal, they develop mutual understanding and respect for each other. This helps in reducing misunderstandings and disagreements, leading to a more peaceful coexistence.

In addition to its social benefits, cooperation is also essential for economic growth. Businesses that foster a culture of collaboration among employees tend to be more successful as compared to those that promote competition. Cooperation leads to better problem-solving and decision-making skills, which are crucial in the business world.

To conclude, cooperation is an integral part of human society, promoting unity, productivity, peace, and economic growth. It is a valuable asset that should be nurtured and encouraged in all aspects of our lives for the betterment of ourselves and society as a whole. So, cooperation is crucial for the overall development of an individual as well as a community.

Individuals must understand the value of cooperation and work towards fostering it in their personal and professional relationships for a more harmonious and successful society. Let us remember that together we can achieve much more than what we can accomplish alone.

Essay on Cooperation Leads to Success:

Cooperation is often viewed as a key factor in achieving success, whether it be in our personal lives or in society as a whole. It involves individuals working together towards a common goal, pooling their resources and skills to overcome obstacles and achieve great things.

One of the main reasons why cooperation leads to success is because it brings people with different strengths and perspectives together. In today’s world, it is nearly impossible for one person to possess all the knowledge and skills needed to accomplish a task on their own. By collaborating with others who have different backgrounds and expertise, we are able to tap into a wider range of ideas and solutions.

Furthermore, cooperation fosters a sense of trust and camaraderie among individuals. When we work together towards a shared goal, we develop a sense of unity and understanding. This leads to stronger relationships, both personally and professionally. In turn, this creates a positive work environment where people feel supported and motivated to give their best efforts.

In addition, cooperation allows for the division of labor, enabling tasks to be completed more efficiently. By splitting up responsibilities among team members based on their strengths, it reduces the workload and ensures that each person is contributing in a meaningful way. This not only increases productivity but also prevents burnout and promotes better work-life balance.

Cooperation also plays a crucial role in problem-solving and decision-making. When faced with challenges or difficult decisions, working together allows for different perspectives to be considered. This leads to more well-rounded solutions that may not have been possible if each person had tackled the issue alone. Additionally, when decisions are made collectively, it creates a sense of ownership and accountability among team members.

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In conclusion, cooperation is essential for achieving success in any aspect of life. It allows us to harness the power of teamwork and utilize each individual’s strengths to overcome obstacles and reach our goals. By fostering trust, promoting efficiency, and encouraging diverse perspectives, cooperation paves the way for greater achievements and a more harmonious society overall.

Q: What is a short paragraph on cooperation?

A: Cooperation is the act of individuals or groups working together to achieve common goals. It involves collaboration, communication, and shared efforts, leading to increased efficiency and the ability to overcome challenges collectively.

Q: Why is cooperation important in life?

A: Cooperation is essential in life because it promotes unity, fosters teamwork, and enables people to achieve more collectively than they can individually. It strengthens relationships, resolves conflicts, and contributes to personal and societal well-being.

Q: What is cooperation and why is it important?

A: Cooperation is the act of individuals or groups working harmoniously to achieve shared objectives. It’s important because it enhances efficiency, encourages synergy, and is the foundation for social progress and achieving common aspirations.

Q: What are the 10 benefits of cooperation?

A: 1. Enhanced problem-solving and creativity.

• Strengthened relationships and trust.
• Increased productivity and efficiency.
• Resource sharing and cost reduction.
• Collective learning and knowledge exchange.
• Conflict resolution and reduced tension.
• Improved communication and collaboration.
• Mutual support and emotional well-being.
• Greater societal and economic progress.
• Enhanced global peace and diplomacy.

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Essays About Cooperation: Top 5 Examples and 10 Prompts

Cooperation is vital to the achievement of common goals in any society. Below are examples and prompts on essays about cooperation.

Cooperation refers to the action of working together. The spirit of cooperation rose as far back as our early ancestors when they shared hunting, fishing, and farming practices to help each other survive. Cooperation is essential in furthering development in any field as it enables collective action toward positive outcomes that benefit many. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much,” as g the widely used quote by American Writer and Educator Helen Keller. 

Here are our top picks of rich, well-written essays on cooperation:

Top 5 Essay Examples About Cooperation

1. when to cooperate with colleagues and when to compete by randall s. peterson and kristin j. behfar, 2. from conflict to cooperation: building stronger cross cultural teams by michael henman, 3. how to… cooperate by guy browning, 4. what the world’s most sociable people reveal about friendliness by david robson, 5.  the cooperative movement in the philippines by preeti sancheti, 1. benefits of starting cooperation at home, 2. environmental cooperation, 3. cooperation in a pandemic, 4. cooperative behavior in animals, 5. international cooperation, 6. encouraging students to cooperate, 7. dealing with uncooperative school project members, 8. cooperation vs. competition, 9. cooperation vs. collaboration, 10. illegal forms of cooperation.

“We have seen how easy it is to view relationships as simply negative or positive. Virtually all are a mix of both and require careful thought to manage. To do so effectively, you must first understand where you and your colleagues fall on the conflict-collaboration spectrum.”

The writers aim to help workers determine the degree of cooperativeness or competitiveness in their relationships with colleagues. By providing real-life case scenarios and workarounds, the essay also helps workers handle difficult situations maturely to further company goals while preserving self-interests such as promotion. 

Check out these essays about reading and essays about the contemporary world .

“Running a team these days is a different endeavor than it was in the past due to the emergence of cross cultural teams. The usual challenges of team building and fostering teamwork have become even more magnified.”

The author shares the sentiment of businesses dealing with cross-cultural teams, a norm today in our globalized world. The essay provides tips to ensure that the spirit of cooperation remains burning. These tips include respecting and promoting respect for cultural differences, establishing norms, developing a team identity, “overcommunicating,” and building rapport and trust.

“An essential part of cooperation therefore is a little give and take. This doesn’t mean they give and you take. Rather, it means everyone making a few compromises.”

Browning believes that cooperation is not part of human nature, citing how we even require contracts to put it in force. But to nurture cooperative behavior, which has its benefits, the authors advise everyone to listen intently to others and be amenable to making compromises from time to time. You can also check out these essays about business .

“It is a profound idea that… humans began to take their evolution into their own hands, turning us into the uniquely cooperative animals we are today. Williams syndrome may affect just one in thousands of people, but by inspiring this research, its traits might help us understand the social instincts in all of us.”

Researchers find hope in finding the origins of human cooperation through a rare syndrome that makes people highly sociable. Research on the syndrome gave rise to a discovery that could offer insights into the evolutionary process that led to developing friendliness and collaborative behavior.

“The cooperative movement is built on the principles of cooperation… This structure holds promise, especially when applied to risk management, and I hope to leverage this principle as we design new solutions that benefit members and which are sustainable for the institution.” 

The essay takes tremendous interest in cooperatives in the Philippines, elaborating on how these groups operate. Cooperatives, groups that mobilize to offer programs that serve the economic, social, cultural, and spiritual development of their members, are based on the concept of “bayanihan” – an early traditional practice in the Philippines where communities work together to move tiny Filipino houses to places to avoid danger in an area. 

10 Writing Prompts On Essays About Cooperation

Find below our list of relevant and exciting prompts:

Nurturing cooperation at home becomes not just a place to live but a place to build your character. So, first, share how cooperation is being promoted at your home. Then, list the benefits that could redound to society if cooperation is practiced at home.

With the urgent problems in our environment today, cooperative actions must also focus on protecting the environment. In your essay, discuss how our community unifies to address and prevent further environmental degradation. However, suppose you want to look into the bigger picture. In that case, you may also discuss the level of cooperation in national or global environmental efforts.

There’s no better time to work together than when fighting a pandemic. For this prompt, look into cooperative actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, or in past pandemics you have read about. Pick out and discuss inspiring case examples where efforts were mobilized. For example, different actors in society collaborated to respond to the urgent needs of the times, such as providing protective gear to frontline staff or helping those who lost their jobs to recover. In your essay, you can discuss examples from citizens who stepped up to help during the height of the pandemic.

Cooperation is standard behavior in animals, with manifestations most prevalent in how they hunt and live in groups. Your essay could answer the primary reasons behind this behavior, elaborate on the cooperative practices of animals and draw similarities between human and animal instincts and experiences in cooperation.

International cooperation has been largely perceived as vital in tackling pressing global issues, such as poverty, climate change, health, and security. You may also focus on international organizations founded on cooperative objectives, such as the United Nations (UN). The UN was born right after World War II to bring peace and prosperity to all. Research on what international multilateral agreements have resulted from international cooperation and tackle the outcomes of these deals so far. 

Fostering cooperative behavior early in life is beneficial for developing one’s social and interpersonal competence. However, teaching the value of cooperation to students could be challenging at times. Think of ways how schools could mold cooperation in the classrooms. Look into current best practices and offer these as recommendations. 

We’ve all had our encounters with uncooperative group members. It is unfair to think they could get the same grade we worked hard for without a minimal contribution. Narrate your encounter with such an uncooperative school project member or partner. Write about how you dealt with the situation and what tips you recommend to those experiencing the same. 

Competition concerns individual interests, while cooperation focuses on shared goals. Yet, humans are inherently competitive, how can one encourage cooperation for a common goal? Your essay can answer this question and add more points to the difference between these two concepts.

These words are used interchangeably, but how could they be different? You could discuss their differences based on the context of how others use these words. Or, if you are a linguistical geek, you may want to look into their etymological origins and evolution.   

Some forms of illegal cooperation include cartels. These practices go against many competition or anti-trust laws in many countries as these illegal activities could restrict the supply of goods and raise prices to the detriment of consumers and the principles of fair market competition. You may want to tackle cartels in your essay or another form of illegal cooperation, such as organized criminal groups. 

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers . To ensure organization in your essay’s structure, check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University

Strategy Sep 6, 2017

The science behind the growing importance of collaboration, plus, ideas for designing spaces that encourage employees to team up in unique ways..

Benjamin F. Jones

Yevgenia Nayberg

Collaboration is a hot buzzword in the business world. And with good reason. Working with people who have different perspectives or areas of expertise can result in better ideas and outcomes.

But collaboration does not always just happen. Sometimes it needs a little nudge.

Kellogg’s Benjamin Jones , a strategy professor at the Kellogg School, discusses why collaboration is so important today—and how organizations can design their buildings and common spaces to encourage it.

Specialized Knowledge

Why is collaboration important?

Part of the answer—and a growing part, according to Jones’s research —is that our individual knowledge base is becoming more and more specialized.

“There’s more and more to know in the world, and you can only have so much in your head,” he says. “So the share of stuff you know as an individual is declining in any field.”

Jones points to the Wright Brothers as an example. In 1903, two men designed and flew an airplane. Today, a Boeing 787 has dozens of specialists working on the engines alone. Then there are the controls, the hydraulics, the airframe itself.

“There’s just so much going on in designing, building, and flying that plane,” Jones says. “There is an incredible range of specialized skills.”

Meaning, you are unlikely to build a plane today as an aviation generalist. It is the collaboration among all the specialists that gets it off the ground. And the same goes for teams at other factories or offices.

This increasing specialization of skills means that you need bigger and bigger groups, with more and more specialists , in order to be successful.

“Over time, this is an ongoing, never-ending phenomenon of increased specialization, which is ever increasing the demand for collaboration,” Jones says.

Jones, along with Brian Uzzi , a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, demonstrated this in research that focused on the world of academic publishing.

They examined 30 years’ worth of scientific papers—more than 19 million overall—and found that collaboration among scientists and across research institutions grew steadily from the 1950s on.

“There’s more and more to know in the world, and you can only have so much in your head. So the share of stuff you know as an individual is declining in any field.” 

And it was not just quantity but quality that was impacted, the researchers found . By identifying the highest-impact, game-changing papers—as measured by how often they were cited by fellow scientists—Jones and Uzzi found that collaboration provides a significant boost.

“In everything, teams beat solo,” Jones says. “In the 1950s and 60s, in lots of fields, solo beat teams. It’s flipped. Now teams always have a higher home-run probability than solo.”

Adding Just Enough Spice

But simply adding more and more people to a team does not guarantee success. There is an art to collaboration, too.

In another project with Uzzi , the researchers turned again to the realm of academic research, this time asking: Were the most high-impact papers very conventional in the way they integrated ideas, or were they very novel?

“Are they combining things that everyone else is combining?” Jones says. “Or are they combining things together that no one’s combining?”

They found that the sweet spot was when research was mostly conventional but had just a little bit of novelty.

The most successful papers, “are mostly hyper-conventional,” Jones says, “really deep in an area everyone’s seen before. And then there’s a little bit of spice.”

Finding the right balance is the key.

“If the whole thing is spicy, it does badly,” he says. “If it’s hyper-conventional with no spice, it does badly. So you’ve got to be really grounded, but then you’ve got to mix in something unexpected.”

This sweet spot applies far outside the realm of scientific research. Take consumer goods—particularly those that involve new technology.

“So many consumer products that are novel, when you look at them, have all these conventional features that they don’t actually need,” Jones says.

He pulls out his phone and takes a picture to demonstrate.

“Hear that click? It’s a click just like a camera,” he says. “Why? They could have had it go ‘boop,’ or it could have vibrated or it could have said, ‘banana.’ But instead it makes that click. You’re used to that sound as a consumer, so you’re comfortable.”

Laying the Groundwork for Collaboration

What can organizations do to encourage the next breakthrough product or idea? How can they ensure that little bit of spice, that teaming up of specialists in new ways?

One solution is to, quite literally, make space for people to meet potential collaborators they may not otherwise run into.

Pixar is a perfect example , Jones says.

“Pixar designed its headquarters in California with all the bathrooms in the center of the building, and all the food and coffee in the center in an atrium,” Jones says. “They were very intentional about wanting people who are artists and animators, and the coders, and the music people, and the screen writers to be constantly bumping into each other in random ways to spark ideas.”

Company leaders can also hold events—from putting out bagels in the morning to afternoon happy hours—in these central spaces to encourage mixing and mingling of ideas, Jones says.

At Kellogg, the Global Hub building was designed with collaborative space at its core. And, Jones says, it’s effective. He finds himself talking about potential new collaborations with people outside his department.

“You’re bumping into people and you’re having conversations that you wouldn’t otherwise have,” he says. “I’m talking to a finance person, to a marketing person, to a sociologist.”

Not every interaction is going to lead to a home run, he says. But that’s okay.

“Many of those interactions are going to be dead ends,” from a collaborative point of view, Jones says. “But I think it creates the greater probability of creating some interactions where you’re like, ‘Hey, wait a second. We should talk.’”

Gordon and Llura Gund Family Professor of Entrepreneurship; Professor of Strategy

About the Writer Emily Stone is the senior research editor of Kellogg Insight .

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The Power of Collaboration: Achieving Success Together

Competition is often perceived as the driving force behind success, as individuals are encouraged to differentiate themselves and stand out. However, recent research challenges this belief and emphasizes the power of collaboration in achieving success together. By examining the behavior of lightning bugs in the mangrove forest, where coordinated lighting eliminates the need for competition, we can draw parallels to human collaboration. This article explores the benefits of collaboration, such as fostering innovation, increasing productivity, and enhancing problem-solving abilities. Additionally, it highlights the importance of collaboration in building successful ecosystems, promoting growth, development, trust, and cooperation among individuals.

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways

• Success is often associated with being different from others, but research shows that this belief is not accurate.
• Collaboration eliminates the need for competition and leads to collective success.
• Collaboration fosters innovation, creativity, and problem-solving abilities.
• Collaborative ecosystems promote growth, development, trust, and cooperation among individuals.

The Benefits of Collaborative Efforts

Collaborative efforts in achieving success are beneficial as they foster innovation, result in increased productivity, enhance problem-solving abilities, and provide support and resources through collaborative networks. Collaborative partnerships allow individuals to pool their knowledge, skills, and expertise, which often leads to the generation of new ideas and solutions. Through collaboration, individuals can build upon each other’s strengths and compensate for each other’s weaknesses, resulting in improved productivity and efficiency. Additionally, collaboration facilitates effective problem-solving by encouraging diverse perspectives and approaches. Collaborative networks also provide individuals with access to a wider range of resources, such as funding, expertise, and support, which can further enhance their chances of success. Overall, teamwork advantages are evident in the numerous benefits that collaborative efforts offer in achieving success.

The Impact of Collaboration on Innovation and Creativity

Innovation and creativity are significantly influenced by the collective efforts of individuals working together towards a common goal. Collaborative synergy fosters inspiration and enhances the creative process. The impact of collaboration on innovation and creativity can be visualized through the following imagery:

• A group of individuals brainstorming ideas, bouncing off each other’s thoughts and building upon them, creating a vibrant atmosphere of collective inspiration.
• Team members collaborating, exchanging different perspectives and experiences, leading to the generation of unique and innovative ideas.
• Collaborative problem-solving sessions, where individuals pool their knowledge and skills, resulting in creative solutions that may not have been possible individually.
• Cross-disciplinary collaborations, where experts from different fields come together, sparking new ideas and approaches by combining their diverse expertise.

Collaboration not only fosters inspiration but also encourages a supportive environment that nurtures creativity and innovation. By working together, individuals can tap into a collective pool of knowledge and resources, leading to the development of groundbreaking ideas and solutions.

Building a Successful Ecosystem Through Collaboration

The establishment and growth of a successful ecosystem depend on the collective efforts of individuals working towards a common goal. Fostering collective growth and creating a collaborative culture are essential elements in building a successful ecosystem. Collaboration allows for the pooling of resources, knowledge, and expertise, leading to more effective problem-solving and decision-making processes. By working together, individuals can leverage their unique strengths and perspectives, resulting in innovative solutions and increased productivity. Collaboration also fosters trust and cooperation among individuals, creating a positive and supportive environment conducive to growth and development. Successful ecosystems thrive on collaboration rather than competition, as it promotes mutual benefits and collective success. Therefore, fostering collaboration and creating a collaborative culture are vital for building and sustaining successful ecosystems.

Enhancing Problem-Solving Abilities Through Collaboration

Effective problem-solving abilities can be enhanced through the collective efforts of individuals working towards a common goal. Collaborative problem-solving techniques play a crucial role in achieving successful outcomes. The importance of teamwork in problem solving cannot be overstated. When individuals come together to tackle a problem, they bring a diverse range of perspectives and ideas, leading to a more comprehensive analysis of the problem. This collaboration fosters innovation and creativity, allowing for the exploration of multiple solutions. Additionally, teamwork promotes effective communication and information sharing, enabling the identification of strengths and weaknesses in different approaches. Through collaboration, individuals can leverage each other’s strengths and compensate for their own limitations. The collective effort of a team working towards a common goal not only enhances problem-solving abilities but also creates a supportive and synergistic environment conducive to achieving success.

The Role of Collaboration in Increasing Productivity

Collaborative efforts have been found to significantly enhance productivity levels within a team. By fostering teamwork and promoting effective communication, collaboration plays a crucial role in increasing efficiency and achieving higher productivity. Research has shown that when individuals work together towards a common goal, they are able to leverage their diverse skills and knowledge, resulting in improved problem-solving abilities and innovative solutions. Collaborative environments encourage individuals to share their expertise, ideas, and perspectives, creating a rich pool of resources from which the team can draw upon. Additionally, collaboration fosters a sense of ownership and accountability among team members, as they collectively work towards achieving shared objectives. By harnessing the power of collaboration, teams can optimize their productivity levels and achieve greater success in their endeavors.

Trust and Cooperation: Key Elements of Successful Collaboration

Trust and cooperation are essential components for creating a cohesive and productive collaborative environment. Building relationships and fostering teamwork are crucial in achieving successful collaboration.

• Trust: Trust forms the foundation of any collaboration. It involves relying on others’ abilities, integrity, and intentions. Trust allows individuals to feel safe and secure in sharing ideas, taking risks, and making joint decisions.
• Open communication: Effective collaboration requires open and honest communication. It enables team members to express their thoughts, concerns, and feedback without fear of judgment or retaliation.
• Shared goals: Collaboration flourishes when all participants are aligned and working towards a common purpose. Establishing shared goals helps individuals prioritize their efforts, coordinate their actions, and stay focused on the collective objective.
• Conflict resolution: Successful collaboration requires the ability to navigate conflicts and disagreements constructively. It involves active listening, empathy, and finding mutually beneficial solutions to conflicts that arise.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do limited resources create a sense of competition in society.

Limited resources create a sense of competition in society as individuals perceive the need to compete for these resources. This perception arises from the belief that success is associated with being different from others in order to secure these limited resources.

What Is the Behavior of Lightning Bugs in the Mangrove Forest?

In the mangrove forest, lightning bugs exhibit a behavior of coordinated lighting, leading to increased likelihood of response among females. This communication strategy eliminates the need for competition and benefits the overall ecosystem.

How Do Fireflies Coordinate Their Pulses to Space Themselves Apart Perfectly?

Fireflies coordinate their pulses through a process known as synchronization. Synchronization mechanisms allow them to space themselves apart perfectly, enabling efficient communication and minimizing competition for resources within their ecosystem.

How Does Collaboration Enhance Problem-Solving Abilities?

Collaboration enhances problem-solving abilities by fostering innovation and creativity, strengthening relationships, and providing diverse perspectives and ideas. Research suggests that collaborative efforts can increase productivity and lead to more effective problem-solving outcomes.

How Does Collaboration Foster Trust and Cooperation Among Individuals?

Collaboration fosters trust and cooperation among individuals through trust building activities and the dynamics of teamwork. By working together towards common goals, individuals develop a sense of trust, rely on each other’s expertise, and build strong relationships based on cooperation.

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IELTS Charlie

Your Guide to IELTS Band 7

IELTS Model Essays: Competition v Cooperation (IELTS 19)

In this lesson you are going to see 5 different essays written in response to the following task:

Some people think that competition at work, at school and in daily life is a good thing. Others believe that we should try to cooperate more, rather than competing against each other. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

Cambridge IELTS 19 Academic Test 1

Each essay responds to the same task in different ways. Each essay is accompanied by an essay plan and vocabulary list.

Here is the 1st essay. This essay discusses both sides of the debate, before arguing that cooperation is more beneficial over the long-term.

Essay 1 Plan

Introduction

• Introduce the topic of competition vs. cooperation.
• Mention the debate on which is more beneficial.
• State the aim of the essay: discuss both views and provide my opinion.

Body Paragraph 1: Competition

• Point: Competition drives individuals to excel.
• Example: Workplace productivity and innovation.
• Example: Academic motivation and critical thinking skills.
• Explanation: Competition pushes individuals to acquire new skills and knowledge.

Body Paragraph 2: Cooperation

• Point: Cooperation fosters teamwork and collective effort.
• Example: Workplace problem-solving and diverse perspectives.
• Example: Cooperative learning in schools.
• Explanation: Cooperation enhances academic performance and social skills.

Body Paragraph 3: My Opinion

• Point: Cooperation is more beneficial in the long run.
• Example: Team-oriented workplaces and job satisfaction.
• Example: Cooperative learning preparing students for real-world scenarios.
• Explanation: Cooperation promotes community and belonging.
• Summarize the benefits of both competition and cooperation.
• Reiterate the preference for cooperation.
• Final thought: Encouraging collaboration over competition leads to sustainable success.

[Introduction]

In today’s competitive world, the debate over whether competition or cooperation is more beneficial in work, school, and daily life is highly relevant. Some argue that competition drives individuals to excel, while others believe that cooperation fosters a more supportive and productive environment. This essay will explore both viewpoints and provide my perspective.

[Body Paragraph 1: Benefits of Competition]

Advocates of competition argue that it pushes individuals to reach their full potential. For instance, in the workplace, competition can lead to higher productivity and innovation as employees strive to outperform their peers. Similarly, in schools, students may be motivated to achieve higher grades and develop critical thinking skills to stay ahead of their classmates. The pressure to succeed can drive individuals to acquire new skills and knowledge, ultimately benefiting society as a whole.

[Body Paragraph 1: Benefits of Cooperation]

On the other hand, proponents of cooperation emphasize the importance of teamwork and collective effort. In work settings, collaboration can lead to more effective problem-solving and the sharing of diverse perspectives, resulting in better decision-making. In educational environments, cooperative learning encourages students to work together, promoting mutual understanding and support. This approach not only enhances academic performance but also helps students develop social and emotional skills, such as empathy and communication.

[Body Paragraph 3: My Opinion]

In my opinion, while competition can spur individual achievement, cooperation is ultimately more beneficial in the long run. Cooperation fosters a sense of community and belonging, which is essential for personal and professional growth. For example, in a team-oriented workplace, employees are more likely to feel valued and supported, leading to higher job satisfaction and retention rates. Additionally, cooperative learning in schools prepares students for the collaborative nature of modern work environments, where teamwork is often crucial to success.

[Conclusion]

In conclusion, both competition and cooperation have their merits. However, I believe that fostering a cooperative spirit is more advantageous as it promotes a supportive and inclusive environment, which is essential for sustainable growth and development. Encouraging collaboration over competition can lead to more meaningful and lasting achievements.

Vocabulary List

• Competitive world – phrase referring to a society where individuals or groups compete.
• Drive individuals to excel – idiom meaning to motivate people to achieve high standards.
• Workplace productivity – noun phrase referring to the efficiency of employees at work.
• Critical thinking skills – noun phrase denoting the ability to analyze and evaluate an issue.
• Collective effort – phrase meaning a combined effort by a group.
• Mutual understanding – noun phrase meaning shared comprehension among people.
• Supportive and inclusive environment – complex noun phrase referring to a setting that encourages and includes everyone.
• Personal and professional growth – noun phrase denoting development in personal and career aspects.
• Team-oriented workplace – adjective-noun phrase describing a work environment focused on teamwork.
• Sustainable growth – noun phrase meaning growth that can be maintained over time.

Here is the 2nd essay. This essay takes the view that while both competition and cooperation are beneficial, cooperation should be prioritised.

Essay 2 Plan

• Acknowledge the ongoing debate.
• State the aim of the essay: examine both perspectives and provide my opinion.

Body Paragraph 1: Benefits of Competition

• Point: Competition drives excellence and personal achievement.
• Example: Workplace productivity and performance incentives.
• Example: Academic motivation and resilience in sports competitions.
• Explanation: Competition leads to critical life skills.

Body Paragraph 2: Benefits of Cooperation

• Point: Cooperation creates a harmonious and productive atmosphere.
• Example: Workplace creativity and problem-solving.
• Example: Cooperative learning and social skill development.
• Explanation: Cooperation promotes a supportive environment.
• Point: Cooperation is more beneficial for long-term success.
• Example: Teamwork and employee satisfaction in companies.
• Example: Cooperative learning preparing students for future challenges.
• Explanation: Cooperation is essential in an interconnected world.
• Summarize the advantages of both competition and cooperation.
• Final thought: Prioritizing cooperation fosters a supportive society.

The ongoing debate about whether competition or cooperation is more beneficial in various aspects of life, such as work, school, and daily activities, continues to spark interest. Some believe that competition is essential for personal and societal advancement, while others advocate for the benefits of cooperation. This essay will examine both perspectives and provide my opinion.

Advocates of competition assert that it drives individuals to strive for excellence. In professional settings, competition can lead to increased productivity and innovation as employees aim to outperform their colleagues. Similarly, in educational contexts, competitive environments can motivate students to achieve higher academic standards and develop resilience. For instance, sports competitions teach students the value of hard work, perseverance, and discipline, which are crucial life skills.

[Body Paragraph 2: Benefits of Cooperation]

Conversely, those who favour cooperation argue that it cultivates a more harmonious and productive atmosphere. In the workplace, collaboration can enhance creativity and problem-solving by bringing together diverse perspectives and expertise. In schools, cooperative learning strategies, such as group projects and peer tutoring, help students develop interpersonal skills and foster a sense of community. Cooperation encourages individuals to work together towards common goals, promoting a supportive environment where everyone can thrive.

I believe that while competition has its place, cooperation is ultimately more beneficial for long-term success. In today’s interconnected world, the ability to work effectively with others is essential. For example, companies that emphasize teamwork and collaboration often experience higher levels of employee satisfaction and lower turnover rates. Similarly, students who engage in cooperative learning activities are better prepared for real-world challenges, as they learn to communicate, negotiate, and compromise.

In conclusion, both competition and cooperation offer unique advantages. However, I contend that cooperation should be prioritized, as it fosters a supportive and inclusive environment that is conducive to sustainable success. By promoting collaboration over competition, we can create a society where individuals work together to achieve shared goals, leading to greater overall prosperity.

• Ongoing debate – noun phrase referring to a continuous discussion.
• Drives individuals to strive for excellence – idiom meaning motivates people to aim for the best.
• Resilience in sports competitions – noun phrase referring to the ability to recover from setbacks in sports.
• Enhanced creativity and problem-solving – noun phrase describing improved ability to create and solve issues.
• Collective goals – noun phrase meaning shared objectives.
• Interconnected world – adjective-noun phrase describing a world where everyone is connected.
• Shared knowledge and resources – noun phrase referring to information and materials that are used collectively.
• Employee satisfaction – noun phrase denoting the contentment of workers.
• Real-world challenges – adjective-noun phrase referring to practical problems faced in life.
• Overall prosperity – noun phrase meaning general well-being and success.

Here is the 3rd essay, written in response to the same task. It takes a similar view to Essay 2, arguing that while competition can have short-term benefits, cooperation has long-term benefits.

• Mention the relevance of the debate.
• State the aim of the essay: discuss both viewpoints and provide my perspective.

Body Paragraph 1: Arguments for Competition

• Point: Competition is a powerful motivator.
• Example: Workplace performance and incentives.
• Example: Academic achievement and scholarship motivation.
• Explanation: Competition drives individuals to excel.

Body Paragraph 2: Arguments for Cooperation

• Point: Cooperation fosters teamwork and mutual support.
• Example: Workplace innovation through collaboration.
• Explanation: Cooperation enhances social skills and inclusivity.

Body Paragraph 3: My Perspective

• Point: Cooperation offers long-term benefits.
• Example: Shared knowledge and resources in the workplace.
• Example: Cooperative learning preparing students for teamwork.
• Explanation: Cooperation promotes collective growth.
• Final thought: Encouraging cooperation leads to sustainable success.

The question of whether competition or cooperation is more beneficial in work, school, and daily life is a subject of much debate. Some argue that competition drives progress and individual excellence, while others believe that cooperation fosters a more supportive and effective environment. This essay will discuss both viewpoints and provide my own perspective.

[Body Paragraph 1: Arguments for Competition]

Proponents of competition argue that it is a powerful motivator. In the workplace, competitive environments can lead to higher levels of performance as employees strive to achieve better results than their peers. For instance, sales teams often perform better when there are incentives for top performers. Similarly, in academic settings, students who compete for the highest grades are likely to put in more effort and achieve higher academic standards.

[Body Paragraph 2: Arguments for Cooperation]

On the other hand, advocates for cooperation highlight its importance in fostering teamwork and mutual support. In professional settings, collaborative efforts can lead to innovative solutions and improved outcomes. For example, tech companies that encourage teamwork often develop more creative and effective products. In schools, cooperative learning helps students build essential social skills, such as communication and empathy, and can lead to a more inclusive and supportive educational environment.

From my perspective, while competition can lead to short-term gains, cooperation is more beneficial for long-term success. Cooperative environments promote a sense of community and shared purpose. For instance, in a cooperative workplace, employees are more likely to share knowledge and resources, leading to collective growth and development. In educational settings, cooperative learning not only enhances academic performance but also prepares students for real-world scenarios where teamwork is essential.

In conclusion, both competition and cooperation have their advantages. However, I believe that cooperation should be emphasized as it fosters a supportive and inclusive environment, essential for sustainable growth and success. By promoting cooperative practices, we can create a more harmonious and productive society.

• Relevant debate – adjective-noun phrase referring to a discussion that is applicable to the current context.
• Powerful motivator – noun phrase meaning a strong incentive or drive.
• Performance-based incentives – noun phrase referring to rewards based on achievements.
• Scholarship motivation – noun phrase meaning the drive to earn academic scholarships.
• Teamwork and mutual support – noun phrase denoting collaboration and helping each other.
• Innovative solutions – noun phrase referring to creative and effective answers to problems.
• Enhances social skills – verb phrase meaning improves the ability to interact with others.
• Collective growth – noun phrase meaning development as a group.
• Sustainable success – noun phrase referring to long-term achievement.
• Encouraging cooperation – verb-noun phrase meaning promoting teamwork.

Essay 4 Plan

• Introduce the debate on competition vs. cooperation.
• State the aim: discuss both views and argue for the benefits of competition.
• Brief overview of the main points.
• Point: Competition drives innovation and progress.
• Example: Tech industry advancements driven by rivalry (Apple vs. Samsung).
• Explanation: Competitive environments encourage continuous improvement and creativity.
• Point: Cooperation fosters teamwork and collective success.
• Example: Group projects in academic settings.
• Explanation: Cooperation helps develop communication and collaboration skills.

Body Paragraph 3: Opinion in Favor of Competition

• Point: Competition prepares individuals for real-world challenges.
• Example: Sports competition teaching resilience and discipline.
• Explanation: Competitive experiences build crucial life skills.
• Reiterate the stance that competition is more beneficial.
• Final thought: Emphasizing competition leads to personal and societal growth.

The debate over whether competition or cooperation is more advantageous in work, school, and daily life is ongoing. Some argue that competition drives progress and excellence, while others believe that cooperation fosters teamwork and mutual support. This essay will discuss both perspectives, ultimately arguing that competition offers greater benefits.

Competition is a powerful driver of innovation and progress. In the tech industry, for instance, the rivalry between companies like Apple and Samsung has led to significant technological advancements. Each company strives to outdo the other by introducing new features and improvements, benefiting consumers with cutting-edge products. Such competitive environments foster continuous improvement and creativity, pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

On the other hand, cooperation is essential for fostering teamwork and collective success. In academic settings, group projects encourage students to work together, share ideas, and solve problems collaboratively. This helps them develop vital communication and collaboration skills, which are crucial for success in the modern workplace. Cooperation ensures that everyone’s strengths are utilized, leading to well-rounded and effective solutions.

[Body Paragraph 3: Opinion in Favor of Competition]

Despite the advantages of cooperation, I believe that competition is more beneficial as it prepares individuals for real-world challenges. Sports competitions, for example, teach participants resilience, discipline, and the importance of hard work. These experiences build crucial life skills that are applicable in various aspects of life. Furthermore, competition motivates individuals to strive for excellence and achieve their personal best, leading to personal and societal growth.

In conclusion, both competition and cooperation have their merits. However, competition is more beneficial as it drives innovation, prepares individuals for challenges, and promotes personal and societal growth. By emphasizing competition, we can foster an environment where individuals are motivated to excel and continuously improve.

• Competitive environments
• Continuous improvement
• Collective success
• Communication skills
• Collaboration
• Real-world challenges
• Personal growth
• Societal growth
• Technological advancements
• Academic settings
• Market dynamics
• Problem-solving
• Product development
• Strategic planning
• Skill development
• Productivity
• Entrepreneurship
• Economic growth
• Benchmarking

Essay 5 Plan

• Introduce the competition vs. cooperation debate.
• Point: Competition enhances personal performance and achievement.
• Example: Performance-based incentives in workplaces.
• Explanation: Competition motivates individuals to reach their highest potential.
• Point: Cooperation builds strong, supportive communities.
• Example: Collaborative community projects.
• Explanation: Working together helps solve local issues and fosters a sense of belonging.
• Point: Competition drives economic growth and innovation.
• Example: Competitive markets leading to better products and services.
• Explanation: Competition encourages efficiency and higher standards.
• Final thought: Prioritizing competition fosters excellence and societal advancement.

The debate between the benefits of competition and cooperation in work, school, and daily life is an important one. While cooperation promotes teamwork and collective success, competition can enhance personal performance and achievement. This essay will discuss both views, ultimately arguing that competition is more beneficial.

Competition significantly enhances personal performance and achievement. In workplaces, performance-based incentives drive employees to excel and reach their highest potential. For instance, sales teams often compete to achieve the best results, leading to increased productivity and higher sales figures. This competitive spirit motivates individuals to set ambitious goals and strive for excellence, ultimately leading to personal growth and success.

Conversely, cooperation is crucial for building strong, supportive communities. Collaborative projects, whether in schools or local communities, encourage people to work together towards common goals. For example, community clean-up initiatives bring residents together to improve their environment, fostering a sense of belonging and shared responsibility. Cooperation helps solve local issues effectively and creates a supportive network where individuals can rely on each other.

Despite the advantages of cooperation, competition drives economic growth and innovation. In competitive markets, companies are constantly striving to offer better products and services to gain a competitive edge. This leads to higher standards, efficiency, and continuous improvement. For instance, the fierce competition in the automotive industry has resulted in safer, more efficient, and environmentally friendly vehicles. Competition encourages businesses to innovate and optimize resources, driving economic prosperity and societal advancement.

In conclusion, while cooperation builds supportive communities and addresses local issues, competition is more beneficial as it enhances personal performance, drives economic growth, and fosters innovation. By prioritizing competition, we can create an environment where individuals and businesses are motivated to excel and continuously improve, leading to societal advancement and excellence.

• Personal performance
• Achievement
• Performance-based incentives
• Highest potential
• Supportive communities
• Collaborative projects
• Sense of belonging
• Competitive markets
• Higher standards
• Societal advancement
• Goal setting
• Entrepreneurial spirit
• Competitive edge
• Market leadership
• Talent development
• Strategic initiatives
• Resource optimization
• Competitive advantage
• Performance metrics
• Organizational success
• Consumer satisfaction
• Quality improvement

Practice Exercises 1

Try to complete the essays as above. Drag and drop the missing words/phrases into the correct spaces. (The exercise work best on desktop, not mobile).

Practice Exercise 2

The paragraphs in the following essay are in the wrong order. Try to put the paragraphs into the correct order.

Practice Exercise 3: Hard!

The sentences in the following essay are in the wrong order. Try to put the sentences into the correct order. This is quite difficult, so good luck!

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The Benefits of Cooperation at Work: Why Getting Along Matters

Posted April 30, 2024

Humans just don’t excel at surviving in the wild alone. We have no claws, horns, fangs, shells, or spikes. What we do have is each other—and a far higher chance of survival when we practice cooperation in groups. Our instincts for cooperation at work and elsewhere stems from our group-living ancestors who passed down their cooperative genes. To be a successful group member, we need to get along with our fellow group members, at least to some degree. This viewpoint from evolutionary theory helps explain the importance of getting along at work.

Nearly all meaningful work is accomplished in teams, which are three or more people who share a common goal. 1 Cooperation is a choice to contribute individual effort toward mutual benefit. It involves committing time, skills, and expertise toward group goals. An example would be a software development team that builds an app for a demographic sector they don’t belong to, such as healthcare providers. The app doesn’t intrinsically benefit the developers. Instead, their earnings depend on the product they create via team cooperation.

This article will cover why we cooperate, as well as the benefits of cooperation at work, including status, acceptance, engagement, and performance.

Why We Cooperate

The reasons why we cooperate with each other—our drive to get along—are addressed in socioanalytic theory. Socioanalytic theory claims that three universal motives lie at the root of human behavior: (1) getting along, (2) getting ahead, and (3) finding meaning. Getting along, or cooperation, relates to our desire to gain attention, approval, and acceptance. 3 Social acceptance is so central to human affairs that people will live or die in pursuit of it.

Humans cooperate because we are inherently social beings. We live in groups; therefore, we are motivated to get along with others. Other people provide the in-group belonging that we all seek in the form of social approval. Being able to cooperate successfully means being aware of our performance in the context of other people’s performance. The work we do and the way we do it affect the work of others on our team and whether the team achieves its goals.

Getting along well requires a certain degree of socioemotional skills, including self-awareness and emotional intelligence.

Self-Awareness and Reputation

We have two ways to view personality —from the inside and the outside. The inside view is called identity, which is someone’s perception of themselves. The outside view is called reputation, which is made of everyone else’s perception of that person. Reputation is formed during social exchange, when we evaluate each other’s behavior. 2

How we seem to others affects how likely we are to get along in a group, and being aware of how others perceive us can help us manage our behavior to improve our ability to get along. Personality assessment can help us build this awareness. At Hogan, we use personality assessment to measure the degree to which a person seems considerate, perceptive, and socially sensitive. Interpersonal Sensitivity, the scale that assesses these characteristics, is one of seven scales on the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) , which provides insights about everyday personality strengths.

All levels of Interpersonal Sensitivity have benefits and drawbacks depending on social context:

• Low Interpersonal Sensitivity – A communication style that tends to appear direct, candid, and straightforward, yet might also be perceived as abrasive and argumentative
• Average Interpersonal Sensitivity – A communication style that typically seems cooperative and friendly with a tactful approach to conflict, yet might also appear impatient with others’ shortcomings
• High Interpersonal Sensitivity – A communication style that seems diplomatic, friendly, and warm, yet might also be perceived as conflict avoidant and overly sensitive

Personality data can help us excel at cooperation at work. We work together best when we recognize when and how to use our own behavioral tendencies to achieve outcomes for the group.

Emotional Intelligence

Nearly every job in the world requires workers to interact with other people, whether they work in a coffeehouse, courthouse, or even lighthouse. Being considerate of others is a keystone of successful cooperation. 4 People who are positive, predictable, and sensitive toward others tend to perform very well at the job of getting along. 4

Robert Hogan, PhD, founder and president at Hogan Assessments, rightly observed, “Career success depends on the ability to successfully interact with others, build and maintain relationships, and manage one’s social environment.” In other words, successful workplace cooperation depends on emotional intelligence, which consists of socioemotional skills related to identifying and managing one’s own and others’ emotions. Emotional intelligence matters because emotion influences how we act and are perceived at work.

Getting along helps your group to get ahead—and, by definition, you get ahead too. Cooperation also provides additional organizational benefits, aside from merely achieving shared goals.

Benefits of Cooperation at Work

Among the many benefits of cooperation at work are individual status, acceptance by others, employee engagement, and team performance. We’ll look at how getting along relates to each benefit using our software development team example.

All groups have social hierarchies. In a team’s hierarchy, a person’s status is determined not only by job title but also by reputation. The director of technology may be nominally in charge of the software development team, but the project manager might actually be more effective at facilitating team cooperation, thus making them a more effective leader . Effective leaders persuade others to set aside their individual goals for the good of the team and are evaluated according to the team’s performance. 2 That is the Hogan definition of a leader—one who builds and maintains a high-performing team. A leader must leverage their reputation to achieve goals by means of a team’s work.

Successful leadership, then, depends on the ability to get along—to convince others to share goals and succeed or fail as a team. These critical socioemotional skills, including negotiation, affect whether someone attains a leadership role or leads effectively. To someone seeking power, status, and the control of resources ( the universal motive we call “getting ahead” ), cooperation also serves the pursuit of leadership. According to Dr. Hogan, “You can’t get ahead unless you can get along.”

Fulfilling our core human motivation for acceptance by others is one of the benefits of cooperation at work. Social acceptance leads to feelings of belonging and trust. Social exclusion causes pain and distress. 5 (Yes, it actually hurts.) When the senior software architects are getting along at work, each is more satisfied with their work life.

A sense of belonging at work built on mutual acceptance among group members is an important metric in the financial outcomes of organizations. Employees who feel accepted at work tend to perform better, stay employed longer, take fewer sick days, and recommend their company to others. 6 A company of 10,000 employees with a strong sense of belonging could save $52,000,000 per year through productivity and talent retention. 6

Cooperation also builds employee engagement , which is an attitude of enjoyment and interest toward work. Decades of engagement research prove that employee engagement raises quality and profitability, while reducing accidents, theft, and absenteeism. 7 Suppose a junior developer is struggling to get along with the other members of the software development team. That person could be counted among the 77% of global workers who aren’t engaged. 7 They would be much less likely to do their best work.

Performance

Groups that cooperate to achieve their goals succeed; groups that don’t can fracture and fail. In prehistoric warfare, the very survival of the group members depended on getting along. The software development team’s lives probably aren’t dependent on their ability to cooperate, but their livelihoods probably are. If they utterly fail to produce expected business outcomes, their organization’s survival could also be at risk. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that team productivity affects group survival.

As you may recall, effective leaders create teams of individuals who are committed to shared goals. Team performance , then, is incumbent on good leadership. And good leadership, in turn, relies on the ability to get along with others.

Personality Predicts Performance

The benefits of cooperation at work are many for individuals, teams, and organizations. Cooperation originates in human genetic history and continues to have a wide influence on global business outcomes. Organizations truly cannot survive without it. Lacking teeth and claws, we instead have social status, teamwork, and leadership to help us succeed.

So, how can we gain more understanding about how we tend to cooperate at work? The nature of human nature shows our innate impulse for cooperation in groups. “At a very deep level, people need social acceptance and respect,” Dr. Hogan said. “It is biologically mandated that you try to recruit people to support you.” Within our teams, our personalities indicate what behaviors we are likely to use to get along at work. Being calm, charming, compliant, curious, and more all contribute to our reputations and thus our prospects for getting along in any given group. That’s why we say at Hogan that personality predicts performance. Who we are determines how we cooperate.  

• Hogan, R. (2006). Personality and the Fate of Organizations . Routledge.
• Hogan, R., & Sherman, R. A. (2020). Personality Theory and the Nature of Human Nature. Personality and Individual Differences, 152 , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.10956
• Hogan, R., & Blickle, G. (2018). Socioanalytic Theory: Basic Concepts, Supporting Evidence and Practical Implications. In V. Zeigler-Hill & T. K. Shackelford (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Personality and Individual Differences .Sage Reference, 110–129. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526451163.n5
• Hogan, J., & Holland, B. (2003). Using Theory to Evaluate Personality and Job-Performance Relations: A Socioanalytic Perspective. The Journal of Applied Psychology, 88 (1), 100–112. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.1.100f
• Williams K. D. (2007). Ostracism. Annual Review of Psychology, 58 , 425–52. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085641
• Carr, E. W., Reece, A., Kellerman, G. R., & Robichaux, A. (2019, December 16). The Value of Belonging at Work. Harvard Business Review . https://hbr.org/2019/12/the-value-of-belonging-at-work
• Gallup Workplace. (2024). What Is Employee Engagement and How Do You Improve It? Gallup . https://www.gallup.com/workplace/285674/improve-employee-engagement-workplace.aspx

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Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: The Importance of Working Together

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Why Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Characteristics of good teamwork, how to foster good teamwork, how to be a good team player.

You’ve probably seen the phrase “Teamwork makes the dream work” printed on office mugs and motivational posters. But what exactly does it mean and what does good teamwork look like?

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

The phrase “Teamwork makes the dream work” essentially means that dividing tasks and responsibilities among a team can lead to better outcomes than a single person doing the same task, says Sabrina Romanoff , PsyD, a clinical psychologist and professor at Yeshiva University.

The saying was initially coined by American clergyman John C. Maxwell. Maxwell published an eponymous book in 2002, in which he wrote, “Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team.” In his book, Maxwell discusses the importance of working together collaboratively and shares some principles for building a strong team.

The phrase caught on and has become popular over the years. In this article, we explore the benefits of teamwork, the characteristics of good teamwork, as well as some steps to help you be a good team player and build a strong team.

Below, Dr. Romanoff explains why teamwork is important and the benefits it can offer:

• Improves efficiency and output: Teamwork is important because much more can be accomplished as part of a team than a single person working alone. Successful teams are much more efficient and effective at completing tasks than individuals.
• Produces better solutions: Teamwork allows the opportunity for diverse perspectives to tackle problems and find solutions that are more resourceful and effective than one person’s input alone. When multiple people are contributing, more knowledge, viewpoints, and feedback are incorporated, helping teammates arrive at more holistic solutions.
• Offers a larger pool of resources: Each member of the team can contribute their efforts, knowledge, abilities, and strengths to the task at hand. The team can tap into the resources each member provides to tackle new challenges.
• Promotes growth and learning: When people work together, there is an opportunity for each member of the team to learn and grow, both personally and professionally.
• Creates strong bonds among teammates: Collaborating on shared tasks, helping others, and working together helps teammates foster strong connections. People bond when they work together toward a common goal in an encouraging and supportive environment.
• Fosters a feeling of belonging: Teamwork also taps into our human need for belonging to a community or group and feeling like we are working towards something that is bigger than ourselves.
• Reduces stress: People tend to feel more supported when they’re part of a team. They often experience less perceived stress because they’re not facing the problem alone.

According to Dr. Romanoff, these are some of the characteristics of good teamwork: 

• Shared goal: A successful team articulates and agrees on a common goal that has meaning to its members. Shared understanding of the goal the team is working toward is crucial so that everyone is on the same page and the team can operate as a cohesive unit.
• Cooperation: It’s important for teammates to actively listen to one another, cooperate with each other, and help one other out when required. A collaborative approach leads to more efficient and effective output.
• Respect: When people feel respected by their teammates, they are able to freely share ideas and opinions without fear of rejection or judgment. This level of safety sets the stage for greater commitment among teammates, originality, and novelty.
• Trust: There is trust that each member will deliver on their role for the team and meet their commitments. Team members take their responsibilities seriously and commit to following through on behalf of the individual members but also for the collective group. Each member is also trusted with placing the team’s interests above their own.
• Coordination: The team is well-organized so everyone is systematically and efficiently working together toward deadlines and shared goals. Effective communication and coordination are the bedrock of good teamwork.
• Strong interpersonal relationships: There are strong relationships among teammates. Team members care about each other and relationships are deeper than just their roles in the team. For instance, there is knowledge and sharing about people’s personal lives, and interest in other’s talents, skills, and interests. Team members take the time to celebrate achievements or have social outings outside of work to get to know each other as people.
• Effective conflict-resolution: Members of the team understand that conflict is inevitable but they are able to successfully manage and resolve them, by prioritizing the team’s goal over individual differences and conflicts. This means addressing issues among team members as they come up instead of pushing them under the rug, while also keeping differences among members in perspective so they don’t override the group’s mission.

Dr. Romanoff shares some strategies that can help you foster good teamwork:

• Define the goal: Define the mission and goal of the team. These can be co-constructed with your teammates, as team members are likely to have more buy-in when they have a role in choosing goals that are personally meaningful to them.
• Regularly ask for and provide feedback: Checking in with team members is the best way to implement needed change. This doesn’t have to be a formal process. Instead, openly discussing how team members are feeling can be normalized as part of the team’s culture.
• Maintain transparency: Be transparent, not just about the goal of the team but the goal of smaller tasks and mandates. This helps people understand how each job and agenda item is contributing to the overall mission of the organization.
• Making learning a continuous priority: Offer trainings, reading material, and resources to team members. Bring in people to teach on new topics and host events where members can share new information and passions with their teammates.
• Recognize accomplishments: Give team members kudos for a job well done and have their good work acknowledged by their peers and managers. 
• Foster a culture of gratitude: It can be helpful to foster a culture of gratitude by having members consider what they are grateful for within the team or in their day, to help them reflect on what they appreciate in another.

If you’re wondering how to be a good team player, Dr. Romanoff has some suggestions that can help:

• Commit to the goal: Commit to the group process and the team’s goal. 
• Take ownership: Take your tasks and responsibilities seriously. Be accountable to yourself and your teammates. Be cognizant of how your actions impact the team.
• Be flexible: Be flexible , open to change, and willing to take on new challenges or responsibilities to help your team.
• Work with your peers, not against them: Don’t compete with your peers. Instead try to work together toward a common goal and help each other out.
• Maintain a positive mindset: Be positive and optimistic. This mindset is contagious and will draw other team members towards you.
• Stay true to your values: Have integrity and speak your mind to advocate for the greater good and values of the group, even if it means going against what other group members are saying.

If you’ve ever been part of a team that just clicked, you know that being part of a team can be engaging and gratifying. Whether it’s at home, at work, on a playground, or in a relationship, working together as part of a team offers several benefits.

Clark W. Teamwork: A multidisciplinary review . Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am. 2021;30(4):685-695. doi:10.1016/j.chc.2021.05.003

Rosen MA, DiazGranados D, Dietz AS, et al. Teamwork in healthcare: Key discoveries enabling safer, high-quality care . Am Psychol . 2018;73(4):433-450. doi:10.1037/amp0000298

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• Published: 09 July 2018

The cooperative human

Nature Human Behaviour volume  2 ,  pages 427–428 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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• Anthropology
• Environmental sciences
• Human behaviour
• Neuroscience
• Social evolution

Human beings are a social species that relies on cooperation to survive and thrive. Understanding how and why cooperation succeeds or fails is integral to solving the many global challenges we face.

Cooperation lies at the heart of human lives and society — from day-to-day interactions to some of our greatest endeavours. Understanding cooperation — what motivates it, how it develops, how it happens and when it fails to happen — is therefore an important part of understanding all kinds of human behaviour. In this focus issue of Nature Human Behaviour , we bring together review, opinion and research content on human cooperation from across the journal’s scope — including evolution, anthropology, ecology, economics, neuroscience and environmental science — to spark interdisciplinary conversation and perhaps even inspire some scientific cooperation. In our dedicated collection on cooperation ( https://www.nature.com/collections/gvmywthghh ), we combine new commissioned content with work from our archive that exemplifies the breadth of enquiry in this important interdisciplinary field.

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Why do we cooperate at all, when choosing the selfish option may seem like the most logical and rewarding in a competitive world? A Review by Hilbe et al. discusses the recent formal theoretical work on partnership versus rivalry in social dilemmas and argues that rivalry tends to develop in smaller populations with limited numbers of interactions, while more frequent interactions encourage cooperation to emerge as an evolutionarily stable strategy. Modelling work by Jagau and van Veelen 1 we published last year also found evidence for multiple stable states of cooperation, showing, in contrast to previous work, how flexible, deliberative strategies can evolve. Of course, many other species have made a success out of cooperation, and a Comment by Brosnan makes the case for a comparative economics approach to uncover cooperation’s evolutionary path.

We can also interrogate the mechanisms and motives behind cooperation by observing how it happens in practice. In a Review, Fehr and Schurtenberger evaluate the experimental literature for evidence of a fixed social norm of conditional cooperation supported by peer punishment, which, they argue, can account for multiple recurring patterns of human behaviour seen in cooperative contexts. In future, we may gain an even more precise understanding of individual motives in these types of cooperative experiments, by directly observing neural responses during game play, as argued in a Comment by Declerck and colleagues .

Successful cooperation requires not only cooperative choices, but also a way to signal your intent and good qualities to potential partners. A Perspective by Bliege-Bird and colleagues examines the subtle signalling that people deploy to solidify their long-term cooperative relationships, using the practice of sharing catches after lizard hunts among Martu hunter-gatherer women as a case study. The most successful hunters share out, subtly, the meat with all, strengthening their reciprocal bonds and distributing the burden of resource scarcity risks. This chimes with a Comment by Aktipis et al. , who suggest that the evolutionary concept of ‘fitness interdependence’ between individuals for survival and reproduction could be adopted as a framework across disciplines to understand why cooperation is so integral to our lifeways.

Even in difficult situations, the desire for cooperation would appear to often be nascent and the evidence suggests that we are naturals at it, given the opportunity.

The Martu example is a system of trust and shared risk that speaks to some of the most pressing issues that humans face today globally, that is, the sharing of risk and the ‘trust’ needed to take collective action. In a previous issue, Koomen and Herrmann 2 showed that children as young as six years old can spontaneously find ways to collaborate to maintain a shared, limited resource. And indeed, a 2017 review of the literature by McAuliffe et al. 3 provided ample evidence that children acquire notions of fairness from a surprisingly early age. However, we know all too well from observing the real world that coordination among adults often fails. Gächter et al. 4 provided partial insight into why this might be, showing that adult participants contribute more when establishing a new collective good, but contribute much less to maintain an existing resource. Muthukrishna et al. 5 showed that typical anti-corruption strategies may have negative impacts on cooperation, depending on the cultural context. These findings are a caution that the levers we apply to encourage cooperation should be tailored to context.

How can we nurture cooperation for the common good? In experiments run by Grossmann et al. 6 , the authors found that they could induce participants to engage in ‘wise reasoning’ to avert making automatic, selfish decisions. In a Comment, Dannenberg and Barrett note that cooperation often fails when individuals are uncertain about the relative importance of their own effect on a critical, environmental threshold, and argue, through successful examples, such as the Montreal Protocol, that institutions must make cooperation the more attractive option. In a similar vein, Castilla-Rho et al. 7 presented a model that identifies the ‘tipping points’ at which groundwater conservation becomes a widely accepted social norm across diverse cultural settings, which can be used by conservation managers to predict the most effective interventions.

Finally, some of the seemingly most intractable cooperation problems in the world today are the conflicts between rival nations and different political, religious or ethnic groups. However, Fotouhi et al. show that a strong barrier to cooperation is simple lack of communication and suggest that promoting even sparse interconnections between previously segregated societies can support the evolution of cooperation globally. Even in difficult situations, the desire for cooperation would appear to often be nascent and the evidence suggests that we are naturals at it, given the opportunity.

Some powerful theories and empirical insights have expanded our knowledge of cooperation over the past few decades — but much remains to be understood. Integrating questions and approaches from different fields may provide fertile ground to achieve this. We look forward to publishing theoretical and empirical research on cooperation in the future that will push the boundaries of the field even further.

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Want to be a great leader how cooperation, sharing and belonging predict success.

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Evidence shows leadership is enhanced with cooperation, sharing and creating belonging.

If you want to be a great leader, you’ll have no shortage of advice from articles, books, pop culture or experts. From setting a vision and giving people a sense of purpose to empowering innovation and stomping adversaries, there are scores of tips for successful leadership.

Perhaps under-appreciated however, is the power of cooperation and generosity in getting ahead, staying ahead and gaining high admiration from others.

Cooperation Leads To Leadership

A new study published in Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Non Linear Science found when people cooperate with more group members over longer periods of time, they are more likely to emerge as leaders in the group. In addition, their cooperative behavior is likely to be imitated by other group members. And of course, as Charles Darwin found, species that cooperated with their own group members most effectively were most likely to survive over species who didn’t. Bottom line: cooperation may be an especially effective way for leaders to gain influence and for groups to be successful.

Sharing And Belonging Are Fundamental

Sharing is a social norm that is critical to being human. It is also learned early. In a study by the University of Münster and Free University Berlin in Germany, children who were only 16 months old were demonstrating helping behaviors as a result of paying attention to social norms. Another study published in Nature Human Behavior found that as early as age 8 children pay attention to the unwritten rules that lead to sharing. They are more likely to cooperate when they perceive generous behavior is valued within a group.

One of the reasons sharing and cooperation are so important to us is because they speak to our need for belonging. In fact researchers at the University of Wyoming analyzed responses from over 2,400 people and found whether people’s primary needs were for prominence, inclusiveness, avoidance of negativity or tradition, at the root of all of these was a need for feeling connected and part of a group.

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Leading Through Cooperation, Sharing And Belonging

All of this has important implications for leadership. Leaders who cooperate, share and foster belonging will be more influential and successful over time. Here’s how that looks on a day-to-day basis in the work environment:

• Share common goals. Successful leadership has everything to do with finding or creating common ground and outcomes which can benefit groups across boundaries. Look for projects on which people or groups across the organization can collaborate, cooperate and win together. This kind of cross-boundary effort can create alliances and strengthen bonds between people and across teams.
• Share the spotlight. Some leaders seem to think their status is based on looking better than others around them. However, smart leaders realize their power comes from making others around them successful. I had a boss who was a take-no-prisoners kind of leader. He was gruff, demanding and hard-edged. One thing he was brilliant at however, was boosting up his group. He demanded excellence and when he got it, he was the first and loudest to provide recognition and positive PR for his team members. His employees went far because he was such an invested champion of their success.
• Share information. Of course, there is some information leaders cannot share with team members. But in general, more transparency is better. Openness about where the company is going, how the business is doing and which priorities are most critical are all helpful context for teams. When people feel in the loop and part of the information network, their sense of belonging will also be elevated.
• Share yourself. Being authentic is also an element of good leadership. I once worked for a boss who was like Teflon. He was professional, poised and unflappable—to a fault. His constant control was helpful in many situations, but became a detriment when people questioned his authenticity. People want leaders who can be strong under pressure, but also leaders who can sometimes let down their hair and show human emotion.

Great leadership requires the right mix of vision, empathy, focus on performance and plenty more. But a big part of success includes cooperating and sharing as well as helping people feel a sense of belonging. Leaders would be well-served to find common ground, provide recognition, be open with information and be authentic. All of these contribute to the conditions in which individuals are more satisfied, the group is more likely to achieve its desired outcomes, and the leader is valued and admired.

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3 Keys to Successful Cooperation

In Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, Cooperation is defined as something one should do “with all levels of your co-workers. Listen if you want to be heard. Be interested in finding the best way, not in having your own way.”

Coach Wooden expanded upon the importance of cooperation as he reflected on the various ways in which technology and progress are bringing people together like never before. He pointed to all the people involved in developing and operating the high-speed travel that we use to crisscross the country. He looked at the space program and how many thousands of people worked together at every level to make every launch possible. He was in awe of global media that could beam images from around the globe into our homes in a matter of moments because a chain of people were working together to bring us news about other human beings elsewhere in the world.

“It’s a small world,” Coach said. “When you stop and think of the food we eat, the means of transportation that gets us from place to place, the clothes we wear; almost every essential for our daily life someone else is responsible for, not ourselves. In everything around us, we need others in every way, and the surest way to have cooperation of others, so that we can make the most of our own ability, is to be cooperative ourselves.”

Related: 5 Essential Lessons You Can Learn From Basketball

Breaking down his definition of the concept, there are three components to Coach Wooden’s definition of cooperation:

1. “With all levels of your co-workers.”

A young man once posed this question to Coach: “Next week, I will be starting my first job as a manager in a brand-new department. What advice can you give me?”

“Make sure the people in your department know that they’re working with you, not for you.”

Coach replied, “Make sure the people in your department know that they’re working with you, not for you.”

The young man nodded enthusiastically and responded, “Coach Wooden, what other advice can you give me?”

Coach smiled, then repeated slowly and carefully: “Make sure the people in your department know that they’re working with you, not for you.”

2. “Listen if you want to be heard.”

One night I was having an energetic but amicable telephone conversation with my mother-in-law, Nan Wooden (Coach’s daughter), on a topic where we simply did not agree. Nan was in the middle of stating her position when she stopped suddenly and asked me, “Honey, are you listening to what I’m saying or are you just thinking about what you’re going to say when I’m through talking?”

I was caught. I had been thinking about what I was going to say when she was done rather than actually listening to her words. Be a better listener than I was on that occasion—you’ll get far better cooperation.

3. “Be interested in finding the best way, not in having your own way.”

In the 1970 National Championship game, UCLA faced Jacksonville University and their great All-American center, Artis Gilmore. Early in the game, things weren’t going well for UCLA; they were trailing in the score and Gilmore was dominating the game. After a timeout, the Bruins made a key change in their strategy against Gilmore and the game turned around. Gilmore only made 9 out of 29 shots. UCLA won their sixth national title, 80 to 69.

What makes this story unique, however, is that the change in strategy that Coach Wooden implemented had been the suggestion of one of his players, Sidney Wicks. Because he was willing to listen to others —and had created an environment where people at every level of the team felt safe sharing ideas because they knew all shared a common goal—the team was able to succeed at the highest level of competition. This moment perfectly illustrates the importance of one of Coach’s favorite expressions: “What is right is more important than who is right.”

We can only reach our full potential if we have the cooperation of others. Coach Wooden’s definition is a great checklist to help us understand how to gain, and maintain, that all-important cooperation.

Related: How John Wooden Led His Teams to a Victorious Life

This article originally appeared on TheWoodenEffect.com and has been republished with permission.

Craig Impelman

As Coach Wooden’s grandson-in-law, Craig Impelman had the opportunity to learn Coach’s teachings firsthand and wrote about those lessons for his site, www.woodenswisdom.com . He is a motivational speaker and the author of Wooden’s Wisdom, a weekly “e-coaching module” that is distributed to companies nationally.

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Team Cooperation-7 Valuable Ways to Build Team Collaboration at Work

As a review, the first phase was to focus on your organization’s goals to create a shared vision for your team . When your team focuses on a common goal and sees the big picture, a collaborative environment will begin to form. The second step is to establish trust and effective communication within your team . Next, we showed you how to reduce conflicts among team members .

You will have a difficult time motivating your team if they don’t trust you or each other. In addition, you will also have a difficult time getting others to cooperate if there is a conflict. So first, make sure to spend some time building more of a team culture using the tips from the other two posts.

To Gain Team Cooperation, You First Have to Know Motivates Each Member of the Team.

Over the years, psychologists have argued about the levels in the hierarchy. The actual levels and order of each level aren’t as important to this discussion as the agreement that we have a hierarchy, though. As leaders, we have to know the hierarchy of our team members and what level they are currently at. For instance, one team member may have been entirely motivated by recognition and appreciation. However, if this person’s child gets sick, the priorities change in an instant.

The point is that the tips below are time-tested ways to build a cooperative team. If the trust is high and conflicts are low, these tips should work very effectively. So, if you find some members of your team to not be as cooperative, it might be that something has happened to move them to a lower level in Maslow’s Hierarchy.

Your goal as the leader of your group of employees is to build a cooperative workplace where staff members are consistently at the highest level of this hierarchy.

7 Valuable Ways to Build Team Cooperation and Team Collaboration.

If you recall in phase one, building trust, I mentioned that constructive criticism is often used to create a behavior change in others. However, criticism will often harm an individual performance. In this session, though, we will cover seven things that you can do to gain cooperation that work much better than constructive criticism. These seven cooperation skills are a great way to get your team members to work together and support each other. In effect, you create a culture of collaborative leadership by focusing on these skills.

• Acknowledge the Importance of Other People.
• Show Enthusiasm and Energy.
• Encourage and Facilitate Two-Way Conversations.
• Ask Other People’s Opinions.
• Ask questions Instead of Giving Orders
• Show Gratitude When Others Cooperate with You.
• Freely Give Strength-Centered Compliments.

For additional details about the difference between constructive criticism and destructive criticism , click here.

(1) Acknowledge the Importance of Other People.

When he gave it to her, she was a little surprised. He was the first person in years to treat her like an equal in the office. When he came back to my class the next week, he told us that she had taken the sticky note off the can and stuck it under the plastic protector that covered her desk so that she could see it every day.

I saw this man a couple of years later and asked him about the sales assistant. He told me that she is still there and still doing a fabulous job. He said, though, that she now has over a dozen of the sticky notes on her desk. She keeps every one.

Great leaders use this aspect of human nature to make people feel important. One way to be a great leader is to find some way every day to make the people around you feel important.

(2) To Build Team Cooperation, the Leader Must Show Enthusiasm and Energy.

Have you ever noticed that the most successful people are the early risers? Ben Franklin called this group of people the “Six O’clock Club.”

Franklin spent the first hour of his day planning the events of his day and reading. He often claimed that he did his best work in the first hour of his day.

How does this relate to raising your own energy level? We have a choice every morning when we wake up. Do I want to hit the snooze bar a few times, or do I want to put some energy and enthusiasm into my day?

When you must do a dirty job, jump in with lots of enthusiasm and gusto. When you have a challenging project that no one else wants to do, you can use that project as an opportunity to set an example for your team. A good team player will often watch the team leader. Each individual player will have just a little less enthusiasm than the team leader. So one of the surest ways to create better teamwork and improve group dynamics is to increase your enthusiasm as the leader.

Everyone wants to be around people who are going somewhere. The person who sets out to enthusiastically get to the next level will attract tons of followers. Enthusiasm is contagious.

So, raise your energy level. Your positive attitude will be contagious and group performance will improve.

(3) Encourage and Facilitate Two-Way Conversations.

Herb Peterson was a McDonald’s franchise holder in 1972 who absolutely loved Eggs Benedict. He tinkered around in his garage and invented a Teflon coated ring that would allow him to make eggs on the hamburger grill. At that time, McDonald’s was just a hamburger place without a lot of additional items. So, when he took the idea to the McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago, I’m sure it sounded ridiculous. However, that dialogue between Peterson and the executives was the beginning of the Egg McMuffin.

Today, it’s estimated that McDonald’s sells about $4 billion worth of breakfast per year.

These dialogues that we create with the people who work for us can provide us with valuable information – both good and bad. This information is critical in helping us make solid decisions in the marketplace.

(4) Ask Other People’s Opinions to Build a Cooperative and Effective Team.

Since he was in a bind, he called all of the foremen together and asked what they thought they could do to fix the problem. One of them asked to borrow the crane and a Skill saw and beveled the rocks by hand. The work was done so well that the architect sent a picture of the building to be judged for an award from the American Institute of Architects.

When we are under the gun, most of us want to take control and begin to order people around. Since time is short, we want to quicken the pace by just telling people what to do instead of asking them their opinion. When we do this, though, we are often missing an opportunity to gain great insights from the people who are on the front line. So, to develop team cooperation, ask the opinion of the other person.

(5) Build Team Collaboration by Asking Questions Instead of Giving Orders.

His boss realized that there was a problem. He pulled him into his office and explained to David that his crew resented being ordered around. The boss asked him to begin to ask for the advice of his team rather than ordering them around.

After the meeting, David began drawing up alternative plans and bringing them to the crew. He would ask their opinion, and nine times out of ten his original idea was the popular choice. The other 10% of the time, he learned valuable insights about design and engineering. These were things that would have taken years to learn in school. Rework dropped dramatically.

So to build a cooperative and effective team, ask the experts on your team for their opinions.

(6) Show Gratitude When Others Cooperate with You.

One of my clients owned a real estate appraisal company. His staff was compensated for the number of appraisals that they completed each week. After a few years, he noticed that the number of appraisals had increased, but the quality was suffering. In fact, he was personally spending a great deal of time rechecking and correcting flawed documents.

One day at a staff meeting, he publicly complimented one of the appraisers who had consistently provided flawless documents. The owner noticed that in the next few weeks, her work actually improved even more. As a side benefit, at the same time, the overall quality of everyone’s documents went up as well. He continued to compliment the improvements, and quality continued to rise.

What he realized was that for years, he had taken the people that worked for him for granted. He assumed that their paycheck was appreciative enough. As he began to show each person how much he appreciated them, the quality of their work improved, and his particular job as the president of the company became easier and easier as well.

So, after you gain team cooperation, show sincere gratitude.

(7) Freely Give Strength-Centered Compliments.

In the business world today, compliments are very rare. We are busy. We also want to make sure that any positive comment isn’t taken the wrong way. As a result, we miss opportunities to reinforce positive behaviors. A good sincere compliment can do just that. It can help you anchor the positive behavior that you see in your team.

My suggestion is to look for something positive that each one of your direct reports has done, every-single-day. Then, tell the person what you like about what the person did. Tell the person how much that behavior helps the bottom line.

You will see the person’s confidence grow, and you will both good about yourselves.

Team Cooperation and a Collaborative Work Environment Leads to Higher Performance and Greater Success.

At the end of the day, the main takeaway is that cooperative groups improve business success. When you create a corporate culture of teamwork, the success of your team is almost guaranteed. A team’s success is higher and team performance improves when group members cooperate well. So, if you want to unleash the full potential of your group, practice each of these seven principles on a daily basis.

Want to Develop a Collaborative Culture within Your Workplace Team?

We offer a number of different team workshops to improve communication skills and help improve work environments. Complete the form below for details about the Creating a Team Culture workshop . This program is one of the best ways to build group cooperation, develop good communication within a healthy team, and improve team dynamics.

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Mankind or all the creatures of all ages and civilizations can not live without interacting with each other. I mean each one in this life has a particular role to play. Male or female, everyone focuses on the matters or affairs that one was created for. Since Adam and Eve were created they started the role of life, thus Adam could not make anything and all things alone, and so could not Eve.

But what is the cooperation itself? It is the practice of individuals or larger societal entities working in common with mutually agreed-upon goals and possibly methods, instead of working separately in competition, and in which the success of one is dependent and contingent upon the success of another.

However, co-operation may be coerced (forced) or voluntary (freely chosen), and consequently individuals and groups might co-operate even although they have almost nothing in common qua interests or goals. Examples of that can be found in market trade, military wars, families, workplaces, schools, and prisons, and more generally any institution or organization of which individuals are part (out of their own choice, by law, or forced).

Cooperation is the mastermind action that helps to judge success from all angles. The argument is the following: You can not make clapping by one hand. As a haiku goes:

• Heat without cold.
• Happiness without disappointment.
• One hand clap.

Here in this subject, the person who can do lots of things in the society is regarded (I mean the society which includes several elements working together.) Hand in hand the world will be ours. Here in our country since Dec.2, 1971, the rulers of the seven Emirates decided to unite this country after the conclusion of the declaration of the Federation among the seven emirates. All the work rose together in all fields starting with the works of improving and uniting the infrastructure and cities building projects and even now the rulers of the emirates still have the attention to cooperate in all the spheres. It means that the person can not live life without helping each other. As we have in Islam several verses of the Holy Quran encourage Moslems to do all the effort and to combine forces for the good things and charity acts, but not cooperate for the war fairs.

Projects oblige people to work together, so teamwork has become an essential concept in organizations. Effective teams are a mediator goal towards getting good, sustainable consequences. The industry has seen increasing efforts through thorough training and cross-training to help people to work together more effectively and to accomplish shared goals, whether colleagues are present or absent.

We need to listen to other people’s ideas. When people are allowed to freely express their ideas, these initial ideas will produce other ideas.

• We need to ask questions, interact, and discuss the objectives of the team.
• We need to treat others with respect and to support their ideas.
• We need to help our coworkers, which is the general theme of teamwork.
• We need to share with the team to create an environment of teamwork
• All members of the team are encouraged to participate in the team.

For a team to work effectively it is essential to team members acquire communication skills and use effective communication channels between one another e.g. using email, viral communication, group meetings, and so on. This will enable team members of the group to work together and achieve the team’s purpose and goals.

Meanwhile, we can see lots of people all over the world doing their best to produce Mass destruction weapons and materials, as the nuclear arms race between the two blocks in the recent decades, for example. This could not be regarded as the essence of cooperation, but it is against the cooperation, which should be for the useful and significant things not for the destructions and terrorism.

It is rather difficult to achieve the aims acting alone. Indeed, the person plans, one can put all the prerequisites for any project. Moreover to the dreams of such projects can be realized later on, but one can not start or run that project alone. Because human beings or mankind are created to depend on each other. The smallest model of the society is the family, independently either it includes 4 members or more than 40. No one can live alone, but everybody depends on one’s relatives, neighbors, and other people from the surrounding.

Regarding the events, both huge and very significant or small but simply pleasant, it is undoubtedly possible to conclude, that we observe the result of the teamwork, hand in hand, to achieve the aims. In addition to the relations between the states or the countries, it is necessary to say, that there are Superpowers in the world, but one can not live alone. It is the Life Philosophy.

To make the dreams come true the person should follow the correct and the most important steps in the way for success, or in another sense to take by reasons of attainments.

Looking at all responsibilities or works we can see the strides that were pursued to reach the achievements. One of the greatest examples, which is also particularly relevant for the Arab Emirates, is the Oil. Before the discovery, there were several countries all over the world looking for fuel – the most important element of the world economy. The specialists realized and discovered that there is oil under the land and every piece of equipment necessary for further discovery and production was provided. The planning for the future works, the man resources, the rigs, and all the team works and staff were made available to start in that work.

In the beginning, the explorers or the teamwork had an opportunity to find the oil effortlessly; they could find it at less than 10 000 feet depth. There could be water or deadly gas. Not having lost the intention, they tried more and more in several other locations. It is usually called the persistence of success. Cooperating and understanding each other are the main factors of successful teamwork, which leads to success.

Some may argue that lots of sportsmen achieve success acting alone, just by training hard every day. But are the sportsmen alone even in the individual kinds of sport such as swimming, running, boxing, F1, etc. Of course, they are not, as before these sportsmen gain success, the coach teaches a sportsman how to move correctly, how to breathe, how to act in a different situation. Swimmer or sprinter competes with his/ her friends to analyze all the possible mistakes and undermine the possibility of the fault. Before the competitions, the sportsman is morally supported by all his/ her friends, relatives, and training staff. If regarding Formula one racing, it may only seem that the pilots are acting alone, in spite they are united in teams. Every pilot is observed by a separate team of the mechanics and the trainers, not taking into account the IT specialists, who are responsible for the correct work of the IT. Humans are the creatures that never make up the convictions, developmental status, and surroundings of the entire globe. To act as if there is no cooperation within states is would be not only unreasonable but also hazardous. Some scholars draw attention to this issue, and while the views may be a bit extreme in the declaration that the world acts as a single incorporated unit, some people are precise in presuming that we join forces with other states, make stronger international organizations, and maintain the humanitarian and educational activities of worldwide civil society. International relations are set, to a large degree, by a range of norms. While some Countries may, at times, oppose the issues of what actions should be regarded as normal, the majority of states realize the mutual profits that can be achieved through collaboration on widely accepted rules. Some illustrations of norms involve the peaceful arrangement of disputes and admiration of national borders.

International cooperation itself is the most essential kind of human cooperation, as it is claimed to maintain order and obedience to world law. International cooperation creates the organizations which are claimed to enhance the world economy, struggle with poverty, help the people who suffered from the disasters.

World history shows that everyone strived to unite the efforts with the others, especially with the neighbors. Thus Germany was united in the Federation after the feudal division and after the division during the cold war resistance. Korea realizes that the united country would be a more powerful actor on the world stage. The states aim to join the international organizations in order not to be alone or isolated from the world affairs

So, a recommendation that I will be able to give after all the conclusions to all my colleagues and friends is not to be alone and keep trying uniting in groups. It is very easy to plan, drew, prepare, and run the mentioned projects alone, but it is difficult to succeed alone in life.

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IvyPanda. (2021, September 9). What Leads to Cooperation and Competition. https://ivypanda.com/essays/what-leads-to-cooperation-and-competition/

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Importance of Education — Education: The Key to Success

Education: The Key to Success

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Empowering individuals, fostering innovation and progress, contributing to societal betterment.

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Culture and the evolution of human cooperation

Robert boyd.

1 Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

Peter J. Richerson

2 School of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA

The scale of human cooperation is an evolutionary puzzle. All of the available evidence suggests that the societies of our Pliocene ancestors were like those of other social primates, and this means that human psychology has changed in ways that support larger, more cooperative societies that characterize modern humans. In this paper, we argue that cultural adaptation is a key factor in these changes. Over the last million years or so, people evolved the ability to learn from each other, creating the possibility of cumulative, cultural evolution. Rapid cultural adaptation also leads to persistent differences between local social groups, and then competition between groups leads to the spread of behaviours that enhance their competitive ability. Then, in such culturally evolved cooperative social environments, natural selection within groups favoured genes that gave rise to new, more pro-social motives. Moral systems enforced by systems of sanctions and rewards increased the reproductive success of individuals who functioned well in such environments, and this in turn led to the evolution of other regarding motives like empathy and social emotions like shame.

1. Introduction

Humans cooperate on a larger scale than most other mammals. Among social mammals, cooperation is mainly limited to relatives. There is little division of labour, no trade and no large scale conflict. Communication is limited to a small repertoire of self-verifying signals. The sick and disabled must fend for themselves. The strong take from the weak without fear of sanctions by third parties. Amend Hobbes to account for nepotism, and his picture of society is not so far off for most other species. In stark contrast, even in foraging societies people regularly cooperate with many unrelated individuals. Division of labour, trade and large scale conflict are prominent features of most known human societies. Human language allows low-cost, generally honest communication of virtually unlimited complexity. The sick and disabled are often cared for, and social life is regulated by shared moral systems that specify the rights and duties of individuals enforced, albeit imperfectly, by third party sanctions.

The scale of human cooperation is an evolutionary puzzle. All of the available evidence suggests that the societies of our Pliocene ancestors were like those of other social primates ( Foley & Gamble 2009 ). Sometime during the last two million years, important changes occurred in human psychology that support larger, more cooperative societies. Given the magnitude and complexity of the changes, the most plausible hypothesis is that they were the product of natural selection. However, the limited cooperation seen in other mammals fits more comfortably within the received theory of evolution than does human large-scale cooperation among non-kin.

Something makes our species different, and in this paper we argue that something is cultural adaptation. This hypothesis rests on three claims:

• (i) Over the last million years or so, people evolved the ability to learn from each other, creating the possibility of cumulative, non-genetic evolution. These capacities were favoured by ordinary natural selection in the rapidly varying climates of the Middle and Upper Pleistocene, because cumulative cultural evolution allows humans to culturally evolve highly refined adaptations to local environments relatively quickly compared with genetic evolution.
• (ii) Rapid cultural adaptation also vastly increased heritable variation between groups. Systems of reciprocity and reputation can stabilize a vast range of behaviours ranging from ruthless spite to prosocial cooperation. Rapid cultural adaptation can then lead to persistent differences between local social groups, and then competition between groups leads to the spread of behaviours that enhance the competitive ability of groups.
• (iii) Then, in such culturally evolved cooperative social environments, social selection within groups favoured genes that gave rise to new, more pro-social motives. Moral systems enforced by systems of sanctions and rewards increased the reproductive success of individuals who functioned well in such environments, and this in turn led to the evolution of other regarding motives like empathy and social emotions like shame.

In the remainder of this paper, we explain the logic behind each of these claims, and sketch the empirical evidence that supports them.

2. Culture allows rapid local adaptation

‘Now, if some one man in a tribe, more sagacious than the others, invented a new snare or weapon, or other means of attack or defense, the plainest self-interest, without the assistance of much reasoning power, would prompt the other members to imitate him; and all would thus profit.’ ( Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man 1871, p. 155)

The human species occupies a wider range of habitats, uses a much greater range of resources, and lives in more diverse social systems than any other animal species. We constitute a veritable adaptive radiation, albeit one without any true speciation. For better or worse, our ability to convert matter and energy into people in almost every terrestrial habitat has made us the Earth's dominant species.

Most accounts of human evolution explain our ecological success as the result of superior cognitive abilities (e.g. Tooby & DeVore 1987 ). While it is probable that individual humans are smarter than other animals, we do not think this is the most important cause of our success. Think about what people have to know to survive and prosper in just one habitat where human foragers have flourished, the North American Arctic. They have to know how to make dozens of essential tools—kayaks, warm clothing, toggle harpoons, oil lamps, shelters built of skin and snow, goggles to prevent snow blindness, dog sleds and the tools to make these tools. They also have to know how to use all of this stuff, where and when to hunt and gather, what to seek, how to process it if you succeed, and so on and on. Then they have to decide how to organize their society: how to regulate exchange of resources, how to organize marriage, resolve conflicts and so on and on. If individual intelligence were the key, individuals could create all of this knowledge on their own.

While we are rather clever animals, we cannot do this because we are not close to clever enough. A kayak is a highly complex object with many different attributes. Designing a good one means finding one of the extremely rare combination of attributes that produces a useful boat. The number of combinations of attributes grows geometrically as the number of dimensions increases, rapidly exploding into an immense number. The problem would be much easier if we had a kayak module that constrained the problem, so we would have fewer choices to evaluate ( Tooby & Cosmides 1992 , pp. 104–108). However, environments are changing far too quickly and are far too variable spatially for selection to shape the psychologies of Arctic populations in this way. The same learning psychology has to do for all the other knowledge, institutions and technologies necessary to survive in the Arctic. It also has to do for birch bark canoes, reed rafts, dugout canoes, rabbit drives, blow-guns, hxaro exchange and the myriad marvellous, specialized, environment-specific technology, knowledge and social institutions that human foragers have culturally evolved. Our learning and inference mechanisms simply are not up to the task.

Arctic foragers could make and do all the other things that they needed because they could make use of a vast pool of useful information available in the behaviour and teachings of other people in their population. The information contained in this pool is adaptive because combining even limited, imperfect learning mechanisms with cultural transmission can lead to relatively rapid, cumulative adaptation. Even if most individuals imitate most of the time, some people will attempt to improve on what they learned. Relatively small improvements are easier than large ones, so most successful innovations will lead to small changes. These modest attempts at improvement give behaviours a nudge in an adaptive direction, on average. Cultural transmission preserves the nudges, and exposes the modified traditions to another round of nudging. Very rapidly by the standards of evolution by natural selection, many small nudges generate new adaptations. Much theoretical work suggests that this qualitative picture of cumulative cultural adaptation is cogent ( Boyd & Richerson 1996 , see Richerson & Boyd 2005 for a review)—coupling learning and social transmission allows populations of humans to rapidly varying environments. Culture leverages individual creativity in just the way Darwin imagined. Scraps of individual insight and luck are spread widely to others, recombined with other scraps, and form the basis for additional innovations, all rather quickly.

We have hypothesized ( Richerson & Boyd 2005 ; Richerson et al . 2005 ) that the psychological capacities that allow humans to learn from others evolved during the Middle Pleistocene in response to increased rapid, high amplitude climate variation. Since the mid-Miocene Earth's mean temperature has dropped several degrees and the amplitude of temperature fluctuations have greatly increased ( Lamb 1977 ; Partridge et al . 1995 ; Bradley 1999 ; Cronin 1999 ). Higher resolution data indicate that the period of these fluctuations has decreased over the last 400 000 years or so, and that during the last two glacial periods substantial changes in world temperature have occurred over periods of a few decades. It seems plausible that the capacities that allow cultural adaptation would be strongly favoured in such a chaotic, rapidly changing world.

3. Rapid cultural adaptation potentiates group selection

‘It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another … At all times throughout the world tribes have supplanted other tribes; and as morality is one important element in their success, the standard of morality and the number of well-endowed men will thus everywhere tend to rise and increase.’ ( Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man 1871 , p. 159)

In this paper we use the word cooperation to mean costly behaviour performed by one individual that increases the payoff of others. Opportunities for cooperation are omnipresent in social life. Exchange and division of labour increase the efficiency of productive processes for all the reasons given by Adam Smith in The wealth of nations . However, in all but the simplest transactions, individuals experience a cost now in return for a benefit later and thus are vulnerable to defectors who take the benefit but do not produce the return. Imperfect monitoring or effort and quality also give rise to opportunities for free riding. The potential for conflict over land, food and other resources is everywhere. In such conflicts larger more cooperative groups defeat smaller less cooperative groups. However, each warrior's sacrifice benefits everyone in the group whether or not they too went to war and thus defectors can reap the fruits of victory without risking their skins. Honest, low-cost communication provides many benefits—coordination is greatly facilitated, resources can be used more efficiently, hazards avoided; the list is long. However, once individuals come to rely on the signals of others, the door is open for liars, flim-flam artists and all the rest. Capital facilities like roads, fortifications and irrigation systems can provide huge benefits. However, the benefits often flow to everyone, whether or not they contributed to the construction.

However, aside from humans, only a few other taxa, most notably social insects, make cooperation a cornerstone of their adaptation. Those that do are spectacular evolutionary successes. It has been estimated, for example, that termites account for half of the animal biomass in the tropics, and that human biomass exceeds that of all other terrestrial vertebrates combined. Nonetheless, cooperative behaviour does not usually evolve because it is vulnerable to exploitation. Even if everyone benefits by behaving cooperatively, selection usually favours individuals who take the benefits without paying the cost, and, as a result, the immense benefit that can be generated for everyone through cooperation remains untapped.

(a) Reciprocity and reputation can explain the stability but not the evolution of larger scale cooperation

While there is some controversy, the evolution of large scale cooperation in other species ( Foster et al . 2005 ) seems to require kinship, perhaps supplemented by policing ( Ratinieks & Wenseleers 2005 ). This explanation obviously does not work for large scale human cooperation among unrelated individuals. Instead, evolutionary thinkers typically explain human cooperation as the resulting from the ‘three Rs’: reputation, reciprocation and retribution (e.g. Trivers 1971 ; Alexander 1987 ; Haley & Fessler 2005 ; Nowak & Sigmund 2005 ). If cheaters are despised by others in their group, and, as a consequence, suffer social costs—lose status, mating opportunities, the benefits of mutual aid when ill or injured—then they may be motivated to cooperate, even though prosocial motivations are entirely absent from their psychology. Of course, punishment may be costly, so we also need to explain why punishers are not replaced by second-order free riders who cooperate, but do not punish. However, there are by now several plausible solutions to this second order free rider problem ( Henrich & Boyd 2001 ; Boyd et al . 2003 ; Panchanathan & Boyd 2004 ) and so it seems probable that the three Rs can explain why cooperation is evolutionarily stable.

The problem is that the three Rs can stabilize any behaviour. If everybody agrees that individuals must do X , and punish those who do not do X , then X will be evolutionarily stable as long as the costs of being punished exceed the costs of doing X . It is irrelevant whether X benefits the group or is socially destructive. It will pay to do X . Thus, the three Rs can explain how cooperative behaviours like participating in group defense can be favoured by evolution, but they can also explain anything else. Since cooperative behaviours are a tiny subset of all possible behaviours, the three Rs do not explain why large-scale cooperation is so widely observed. In other words, the three Rs may sustain large-scale cooperation, but are not sufficient to explain why it evolves in the first place. As was first pointed out by Axelrod & Hamilton (1981) , cooperation in very small groups can readily be explained by the combination of the three Rs and the weak kin selection created by low levels of background relatedness typically observed in social groups (e.g. Bowles 2006 ). However, all of the analysis done so far suggests that the same is not true of larger groups (Boyd & Richerson 1988 , 1992 ; Gardner & West 2004 ; Panchanathan & Boyd 2004 ). Something has to be added to the model.

(b) Multiple equilibria plus rapid adaptation=stable variation among groups

So what explains the evolution of large scale human cooperation? We believe that the most probable explanation is that rapid cultural adaptation greatly increased the amount of behavioural variation between groups. We have seen that repeated interactions can stabilize a vast range of alternative behaviours in different groups. A variety of other mechanisms also can lead to multiple stable equilibria (discussed in Boyd & Richerson in press ). When this is the case, different groups may evolve to different equilibria—one set of practices gets higher reputational benefits in one group, a different set in another group, a third set in a third group and so on. Thus, the social environment varies from group to group, and as a result different behaviours will be favoured by selection or analogous cultural adaptive processes in different groups. Such disruptive selection increases behavioural variation among groups. This tendency will be opposed by the flow of genes or cultural variants between groups due to migration and other kinds of social contact. If local adaptation is rapid compared with mixing, the variation among groups will persist; if mixing is stronger, all groups will converge to a single genetic or cultural variant.

The following simple model illustrates this idea. There are three independent evolving traits, each with two variants labelled 0 and 1. Each variant is evolutionarily stable when common, and thus there are eight stable equilibria (0,0,0),(1,0,0), … ,(1,1,1). The selection coefficient for each trait is s . The population is subdivided into 256 subpopulations dispersed in a two-dimensional space. Each subpopulation exchanges a fraction m of its members with its four nearest neighbours. Initial frequencies are assigned at random. In figure 1 , the frequencies of the three variants in each subpopulation are represented by the RGB colours, so for example a population with the vector of frequencies (1,0,0) is 100 per cent red, 0 per cent green and blue. When mixing is stronger than local adaptation ( m > s ), evolution proceeds as if there were no groups and evolves toward which ever combination of variants is initially more common. When local adaptation is stronger, mixing and local adaptation balance leading to persistent variation among groups. Stronger local adaptation leads to variation on smaller spatial scales.

An equilibrium behaviour in a 16 × 16 array of populations linked by stepping stone migration on a torus is shown. There are three binary traits. Each combination of traits is evolutionarily stable when common, and all basins of attraction are the same. Populations are initialized at random. The vector of frequencies at evolutionary equilibrium is plotted as the RGB colour resulting from that mix of red, green and blue. ( a ) When migration rates are greater than or equal to selection coefficients ( m ≥ s ) all groups have the same behaviour at equilibrium. ( b ) When migration rates are somewhat less than to selection coefficients (2 m = s ) simple clines often persist at evolutionary equilibrium. ( c ) When migration rates are much less than to selection coefficients (10 m = s ) complex patterns of small scale variation often persist at evolutionary equilibrium.

Cultural adaptation is much more rapid than genetic adaptation. Indeed, if we are correct, this is the reason why we have culture—to allow different groups to accumulate different adaptations to a wide range of environments. Thus a shift from genetic adaptation to cultural adaptation should greatly increase the heritable behavioural variation among groups. In other primate species, there is little heritable variation among groups because natural selection is weak compared with migration. Although the strength of selection varies among traits, most selection is relatively weak, and selection coefficients are of the order of 1 per cent. Since one sex leaves at maturity in most primate species, and there are roughly two generations present in a group, migration rates are of the order of 25 per cent per generation. This is why group selection at the level of whole primate groups is not an important evolutionary force. In contrast, there is a great deal of behavioural variation among human groups. And this behavioural variation exists on a wide range of spatial scales. Even neighbouring groups may have very different culturally transmitted languages, marriage systems, and so on.

(c) Stable variation among groups leads to group selection

In the Origin of species , Darwin famously argued that three conditions are necessary for adaptation by natural selection: first, there must be a ‘struggle for existence’ so that not all individuals survive and reproduce. Second, there must be variation so that some types are more likely to survive and reproduce than others, and finally, variation must be heritable so that the offspring of survivors resemble their parents. As the quote at the beginning of this section illustrates, Darwin thought that the same three postulates apply to groups as well as individuals. Only the first two conditions are satisfied by most other kinds of animal groups. For example, vervet monkey groups compete with one another, and groups vary in their ability to survive and grow, but, and this is a big but, the causes of group-level variation in competitive ability are not heritable, so there is no cumulative adaptation. Once rapid cultural adaptation in human societies gave rise to stable, between-group differences, the stage was set for a variety of selective processes to generate adaptations at the group level.

Different human groups have different norms and values, and the cultural transmission of these traits can cause such differences to persist for long periods of time. The norms and values that predominate in a group plausibly affect the probability that the group survives, whether it is economically successful, whether it expands, and whether it is imitated by its neighbours. For example, suppose that groups with norms that promote patriotism are more likely to survive than groups lacking this sentiment. This creates a selective process that leads to the spread of patriotism. Of course, this process may be opposed by an evolved innate psychology that makes us more prone to imitate, remember and invent nepotistic beliefs than patriotic beliefs. The long run evolutionary outcome would then depend on the balance of these two processes.

The simplest mechanism is intergroup competition. The spread of the Nuer at the expense of the Dinka in the nineteenth century Sudan provides a good example. During the nineteenth century each consisted of a number of politically independent groups ( Kelly 1985 ). Cultural differences in norms between the two groups meant that the Nuer were able to cooperate in larger groups than the Dinka, and as a consequence defeated their Dinka neighbours, occupied their territories and assimilated tens of thousands of Dinka into their communities. This example illustrates the requirements for cultural group selection by intergroup competition. Contrary to some critics ( Palmer et al . 1997 ), there is no need for groups to be strongly bounded, individual-like entities. The only requirement is that there are persistent cultural differences between groups, and these differences must affect the group's competitive ability. Losing groups must be replaced by the winning groups. Interestingly, the losers do not have to be killed. The members of losing groups just have to disperse or to be assimilated into the victorious group. Losers will be socialized by conformity or punishment, so even very high rates of physical migration need not result in the erosion of cultural differences This kind of group selection can be a potent force even if groups are very large.

Group competition is common in small scale societies. The best data come from New Guinea, which provides the only large sample of simple societies studied by professional anthropologists before they experienced major changes due to contact with Europeans. Joseph Soltis assembled data from the reports of early ethnographers in New Guinea ( Soltis et al . 1995 ). Many studies report appreciable intergroup conflict and about half mention cases of social extinction of local groups. Five studies contained enough information to estimate the rates of extinction of neighbouring groups. The typical pattern is for groups to be weakened over a period of time by conflict with neighbours and finally to suffer a sharp defeat. When enough members become convinced of the group's vulnerability to further attack, members take shelter with friends and relatives in other groups, and the group becomes socially extinct. At these rates of group extinction, it would take between 20 and 40 generations, or 500 to 1000 years, for an innovation to spread from one group to most of the other local groups by cultural group selection. This might seem slow, but the history of the rise of ever larger and more complex societies in the Holocene does have a millennial time scale.

A propensity to imitate the successful can also lead to the spread of group beneficial variants. People often know about the norms that regulate behaviour in neighbouring groups. They know that we can marry our cousins here, but over there they cannot; or anyone is free to pick fruit here, while individuals own fruit trees there. Suppose different norms are common in neighbouring groups, and that one set of norms causes people to be more successful. Both theory and empirical evidence suggest that people have a strong tendency to imitate the successful ( Henrich & Gil-White 2001 ; McElreath et al . 2008 ). Consequently, behaviours can spread from groups at high payoff equilibria to neighbouring groups at lower payoff equilibria because people imitate their more successful neighbours. A mathematical model suggests that this process will result in the spread of group beneficial beliefs over in a wide range of conditions ( Boyd & Richerson 2002 ). The model also suggests that such spread can be rapid. Roughly speaking, it takes about twice as long for a group beneficial trait to spread from one group to another as it does for an individually beneficial trait to spread within a group.

Selective migration is a third mechanism that can lead to the spread of some kinds of group beneficial traits. In the modern world streams of migrants flow between societies. The extensive literature on this topic (e.g. Borjas 1994 ; Alba & Nee 2003 ; Martin 2005 ) supports two generalizations: (i) that migrants flow from societies where immigrants find their prospects poor to ones where they perceive them to be better, and (ii) most immigrant populations assimilate to the host culture within a few generations. Ethnographic evidence suggests that selective immigration is not limited to complex modern societies, and thus is likely to be an ancient phenomenon (Knauft 1985; Cronk 2002 ). The spread of cultural institutions associated with ancient complex societies, such as China, Rome and India supports the idea that this process is not new. Ancient imperial systems often expanded militarily but the durable ones, such as Rome, succeeded by assimilating conquered peoples and by inducing a flow of migrants across their boundaries. Although the Roman Empire as a political entity eventually faded, its most attractive institutions were adapted by successor polities and persist in modified form to this day. Rome, India, China and Islamic civilization stand in stark contrast to pure conquest empires like that of the Mongols, which expanded but did not assimilate.

A simple mathematical model of this process ( Boyd & Richerson 2009 ) indicates that it has two qualitatively different evolutionary outcomes. The model assumes that there are two possible evolutionary equilibria in an isolated population, and one equilibrium leads to higher average welfare than the other. The population is subdivided into two subpopulations linked by migration. There is more migration from low payoff to high payoff subpopulations than the reverse. When local adaptation is strong enough compared with migration to maintain cultural variation among subpopulations, the population as a whole evolves toward a polymorphic equilibrium at which the variants that produce higher average welfare are more common, but the lower payoff variant also persists. Initial subpopulation size and the sizes of the basins of attraction play relatively minor roles. When migration is stronger, however, initial population sizes and sizes of the basins of attraction predominate. The variant that is common in the larger of the two populations tends to spread and the other variant tends to disappear even it yields a higher payoff.

(d) This argument is consistent with an evolved, genetically adaptive psychology

The claim that cultural evolution can give rise to forms of novel cooperation is vulnerable to an obvious objection: Cultural evolution can lead to the spread of cooperation in large, weakly related groups only if computational and motivational systems existed in the human brain that allowed people to acquire and perform the requisite behaviours. Given that such behaviours were not favoured by natural selection, why should these systems exist?

Like living primates, our ancestors were large brained mammals capable of flexibly responding to a range of biotic and social environments. Natural selection cannot equip such organisms with fixed action patterns; instead it endows them with a complex psychology that causes them to modify their behaviour adaptively in response to environmental cues ( Tooby & Cosmides 1992 ). Cultural evolution can generate novel behaviours by manipulating these cues. For example, cooperation among relatives requires (among other things) a means of assessing costs and benefits, and of identifying relatives and assessing their degree of relatedness. Such systems can be manipulated by culturally transmitted input. Individuals have to learn the costs and benefits of different behaviours in their particular environment. Thus people who learn that sinners suffer an eternity of punishment may be more likely to behave morally than those who only fear the reprisals of their victims. Individuals have to learn who their relatives are in different environments. So the individual who learns that members of his patriclan are brothers may behave quite differently from one who learns that he owes loyalty to the band of brothers in his platoon. Once activated, such computational systems provide input to existing motivational systems which in turn generate behaviour.

This account raises an obvious question: If cultural inputs regularly lead to what is, from the genes point of view, maladaptive behaviour, why has not selection modified our psychology so that it is immune to such maladaptive inputs. This is a crucial question, and we have dealt with it at length elsewhere ( Richerson & Boyd 2005 , ch. 5). In brief, we believe that cumulative cultural evolution creates a novel evolutionary tradeoff. Social learning allows human populations to accumulate adaptive information over many generations, leading to the cultural evolution of highly adaptive behaviours and technology. Because this process is much faster than genetic evolution, human populations can evolve cultural adaptations to local environments, an especially valuable adaptation to the chaotic, rapidly changing world of the Pleistocene. However, the same psychological mechanisms that create this benefit necessarily come with a built-in cost. To get the benefits of social learning, humans have to be credulous, for the most part accepting the ways that they observe in their society as sensible and proper, and such credulity opens up human minds to the spread of maladaptive beliefs. This cost can be shaved by tinkering with human psychology, but it cannot be eliminated without also losing the adaptive benefits of cumulative cultural evolution. Culture is a little like breathing. One could reduce the chances of respiratory infections by breathing less, but the costs of doing so would curtail other essential activities. One could learn less from other people in order to avoid getting bad ideas from them. In humans, the optimum in these tradeoffs has led to lots of breathing and lots of cultural transmission.

4. Natural selection in culturally evolved social environments may have favoured new tribal social instincts

In regard to the moral qualities, some elimination of the worst dispositions is always in progress even in the most civilized nations. Malefactors are executed, or imprisoned for long periods, so that they cannot freely transmit their bad qualities. ( Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man 1871 , p. 166)

We hypothesize that this new social world, created by rapid cultural adaptation, led to the genetic evolution of new, derived social instincts. Cultural evolution created cooperative groups. Such environments favoured the evolution of a suite of new social instincts suited to life in such groups including a psychology which ‘expects’ life to be structured by moral norms, and that is designed to learn and internalize such norms. New emotions evolved, like shame and guilt, which increase the chance the norms are followed. Individuals lacking the new social instincts more often violated prevailing norms and experienced adverse selection. They might have suffered ostracism, been denied the benefits of public goods, or lost points in the mating game. Cooperation and group identification in inter-group conflict set up an arms race that drove social evolution to ever-greater extremes of in-group cooperation. Eventually, human populations came to resemble the hunter–gathering societies of the ethnographic record. We think that the evidence suggests that after about 100 000 years ago most people lived in tribal scale societies ( Kelly 1995 ). These societies are based upon in-group cooperation where in-groups of a few hundred to a few thousand people are symbolically marked by language, ritual practices, dress and the like. These societies are egalitarian, and political power is diffuse. People are quite ready to punish others for transgressions of social norms, even when personal interests are not directly at stake.

These new tribal social instincts did not eliminate ancient ones favouring self, kin and friends. The tribal instincts that support identification and cooperation in large groups, are often at odds with selfishness, nepotism and face-to-face reciprocity. People feel deep loyalty to their kin and friends, but they are also moved by larger loyalties to clan, tribe, class, caste and nation. Inevitably, conflicts arise. Families are torn apart by civil war. Parents send their children to war (or not) with painfully mixed emotions. Criminal cabals arise to prey upon the public goods produced by larger scale institutions. Elites take advantage of key locations in the fabric of society to extract disproportionate private rewards for their work. The list is endless.

Some of our colleagues in evolutionary psychology have complained to us that this story is too complicated. Wouldn't it be simpler to assume that culture is shaped by a psychology adapted to small groups of relatives? Well, maybe. But the same people almost universally believe an equally complex co-evolutionary story about the evolution of an innate language acquisition device ( Pinker 1994 , pp. 111–112). Such innate language instincts must have coevolved with culturally transmitted languages in much the same way that we hypothesize that the social instincts coevolved with culturally transmitted social norms. Initially, languages must have been acquired using mechanisms not specifically adapted for language learning. This combination created a new and useful form of communication. Those individuals innately prepared to learn a little more proto-language, or learn it a little faster, would have a richer and more useful communication system than others not so well endowed. Then selection could favour still more specialized language instincts, which allowed still richer and more useful communication, and so on. We think that human social instincts constrain and bias the kind of societies that we construct, but the details are filled in by the local cultural input ( Steward 1955 ; Kelly 1995 ). When cultural parameters are set, the combination of instincts and culture produces operational social institutions.

5. Conclusion

The model described above gives a cogent Darwinian explanation for why human societies are so cooperative, and why human psychology seems to include prosocial motivations. The theory of cultural group selection is fairly well worked out, and there are a number of convincing examples of the process at work. We believe that work in this area can profit from two kinds of researches: first, there has been little systematic quantitative empirical work that allows an assessment of the relative importance of cultural group selection compared with other processes that shape cultural variation. We need quantitative empirical estimates of rates of group extinction, and of rates of spread of cultural variants due to differential imitation and differential migration. Quantitative estimates of cultural variation would also be useful. Second, this model predicts that societies should exhibit design at the group level, that we should be able to understand the structure and variation of norms in terms of how they enhance group welfare. Of course there is a long tradition of functionalist explanation in the social sciences, but for the most part this work takes the form of group-level just so stories. What is needed are sharp, testable hypotheses about how group functional behaviours, especially group functional norms, should vary with ecology, group size, and other measurable variables.

One contribution of 16 to a Discussion Meeting Issue ‘ The evolution of society ’.

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