The co-evolution of social institutions, demography, and large-scale human cooperation
Journal Article
Powers, S. T., & Lehmann, L. (2013)
The co-evolution of social institutions, demography, and large-scale human cooperation. Ecology Letters, 16(11), 1356-1364. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.12178
Human cooperation is typically coordinated by institutions, which determine the outcome structure of the social interactions individuals engage in. Explaining the Neolithic tr...
Punishment can promote defection in group-structured populations
Journal Article
Powers, S. T., Taylor, D. J., & Bryson, J. J. (2012)
Punishment can promote defection in group-structured populations. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 311, 107-116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2012.07.010
Pro-social punishment, whereby cooperators punish defectors, is often suggested as a mechanism that maintains cooperation in large human groups. Importantly, models that suppo...
The concurrent evolution of cooperation and the population structures that support it
Journal Article
Powers, S. T., Penn, A. S., & Watson, R. A. (2011)
The concurrent evolution of cooperation and the population structures that support it. Evolution, 65(6), 1527-1543. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2011.01250.x
The evolution of cooperation often depends upon population structure, yet nearly all models of cooperation implicitly assume that this structure remains static. This is a simp...