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The study „Homo cooperans: Understanding the nature of human cooperation“ arrives at a clear result: 69 percent of study participants choose to cooperate. At the same time, the study shows that people systematically underestimate the willingness of others to cooperate. The data are based on behavioral cooperation experiments with more than 100,000 people from 125 representative country samples, which together represent 92 percent of the world’s adult population. The study is the first worldwide to investigate human cooperation on a globally representative basis. It provides new answers to one of the most important questions in the social and behavioral sciences: How willing are humans to cooperate with strangers, and which individual factors shapte this behavior.
Cooperation is a fundamental prerequisite for societal well-being. Whether functioning institutions or the provision of public goods such as clean air, public safety, or a stable climate — many of the greatest challenges of our time can only be addressed if people are willing to contribute to the common good beyond their own self-interest. It is therefore crucial to understand why people are willing to cooperate. The individual factors that determine the willingness to cooperate have “so far not been sufficiently researched,” explains Prof. Dr. Armin Falk, Professor of Economics at the University of Bonn.
