Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34601904›Full record

ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021

The complexity of human cooperation under indirect reciprocity.

Fernando P Santos, Jorge M Pacheco, Francisco C Santos

Abstract readReview
In one paragraph

Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
19citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

19 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. One's Actions "Aging Poorly": An Integrative Egocentric Framework for Understanding Impression Management Errors and the Challenge of Temporal Impression Management.Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc · 2026
    Review
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Picking strategies in games of cooperation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Computational evolution of social norms in well-mixed and group-structured populations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024
    Article
  9. Adaptations to infer fitness interdependence promote the evolution of cooperation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023
    Article
  10. Article
  11. Score-mediated mutual consent and indirect reciprocity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023
    Article
  12. Evolutionary stability of cooperation in indirect reciprocity under noisy and private assessment.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023
    Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Reputation and punishment sustain cooperation in the optional public goods game.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021
    Article
  16. Reputation and socio-ecology in humans.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021
    Review
  17. The psychological foundations of reputation-based cooperation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021
    Review
  18. When does reputation lie? Dynamic feedbacks between costly signals, social capital and social prominence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021
    Article
  19. The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Fernando P SantosInformatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, Amsterdam 1098XH, The Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0002-2310-6444
Jorge M PachecoCentro de Biologia Molecular e Ambiental and Departamento de Matemática, Universidade do Minho, Braga 4710-057, Portugal.ORCID 0000-0002-2579-8499
Francisco C SantosINESC-ID and Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, IST-Taguspark, Porto Salvo 2744-016, Portugal.ORCID 0000-0002-9103-2862

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Indirect reciprocity (IR) is a key mechanism to understand cooperation among unrelated individuals. It involves reputations and complex information processing, arising from social interactions. By helping someone, individuals may improve their reputation, which may be shared in a population and change the predisposition of others to reciprocate in the future. The reputation of individuals depends, in turn, on social norms that define a good or bad action, offering a computational and mathematical appealing way of studying the evolution of moral systems. Over the years, theoretical and empirical research has unveiled many features of cooperation under IR, exploring norms with varying degrees of complexity and information requirements. Recent results suggest that costly reputation spread, interaction observability and empathy are determinants of cooperation under IR. Importantly, such characteristics probably impact the level of complexity and information requirements for IR to sustain cooperation. In this review, we present and discuss those recent results. We provide a synthesis of theoretical models and discuss previous conclusions through the lens of evolutionary game theory and cognitive complexity. We highlight open questions and suggest future research in this domain. This article is part of the theme issue 'The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling'.

Indexed as

Cooperative BehaviorModels, PsychologicalBiological EvolutionGame TheoryHumansMoralsSocial Normscomplexitycooperationevolutionary dynamicsevolutionary game theoryindirect reciprocityreputation

Identifiers

PMID34601904
PMCPMC8487734

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.