Are economists selfish? Does studying economics make you selfish

Tim Harford in The FT

Against my better judgment, I was recently prevailed upon to play a game of Monopoly with the family. It soon developed in a fashion that has become familiar: everyone tried to rip everyone else’s face off, except me. I proposed a mutually beneficial deal to each player, offering extra concessions myself to make sure those deals got done. This dealmaking tactic didn’t go down well. Every time I reached an agreement with one player, the other players fumed. 

Before long, I was being roundly denounced as a ruthless exploiter of innocents. This made me sad. It was partly the disheartening realisation that I am clearly a punchable opponent at the board-game table. But there was something more. My plight in being cast as a pantomime villain seemed to stand in for the fate of economists as a whole. 

I should explain. In looking for advantageous trades, I was doing what comes naturally to economists. The basic building block of economic activity — so basic that we take it for granted — is two people making each other better off by finding gains from trade. You can easily spot the economists at the Monopoly table, they’re the ones trying to find the deals that make both sides happy. 

But are we lauded for our fascination with voluntary agreements for mutual benefit? We are not. Instead, economists are often accused both of celebrating selfishness and of being selfish. As Yoram Bauman, an economist and comedian, once joked: “The only reason we don’t sell our children is that we think they’ll be worth more later.” 

What have we done to earn this reputation for ruthlessness? Perhaps it’s that altruism and charity are not front and centre in economic analysis. It may be the character of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987), assuring us that “greed, for lack of a better word, is good”, somehow being associated with economists. 

But our reputation for being calculating and unfeeling may also be thanks to the experimental evidence. Over the years, a series of studies have emerged which seem to show that studying economics causes students to behave more selfishly. 

The basic idea sounds plausible. If you sit in enough classes being told that people are fundamentally self-interested, you yourself might become more self-interested. A 1993 paper by Robert Frank, Tom Gilovich and Dennis Regan summarised some of this evidence. It found economics students tended to behave less cooperatively in experimental games. They also expected less honesty from others. For example, if asked whether they would expect a stranger who found some lost cash to try to return it. More recent research by Bauman and his colleague Elaina Rose found that economics students were less likely to contribute to two named charities in a classroom exercise. 

Yet there is a pair of big question marks hanging over this collection of studies. The first is whether economics teaches people to be selfish, or whether instead selfish people gravitate towards economics. Bauman and Rose note that economics majors are equally mean whether they are near the beginning or the end of their studies — in other words, perhaps economics has no effect on people’s generosity, but big-hearted people avoid economics classes. 

Perhaps more important, do these questions really measure honesty, selfishness or any other moral virtue? That’s not clear. In the Bauman and Rose study, for example, the two charities in question were both left-leaning activist groups. So did economics students refuse to contribute because they hate giving to charity? Or did they feel that these particular charities were not very worthy causes? 

As for classroom exercises, there is a sense in which the selfish move is the “correct” answer in certain experimental settings, such as the prisoner’s dilemma game. If a student is taught that, and then plays the selfish move, have they become more selfish in everyday life? It seems just as plausible to suggest that they have been taught how to reproduce the textbook answer in an academic setting and want to pass the economics test. 

There are certain tendencies in mainstream economics that might nudge people towards a cynical view of human nature, but there is also a long tradition in economics arguing that free markets promote co-operation, honesty, respect for others, freedom and reciprocal benefit. 

So does studying economics make you selfish? A new study with that title, by Girardi, Mamunuru, Halliday and Bowles, finds “no discernible effect” of studying economics either on self-interest or on the belief that other people are self-interested. 

I suggest that before besmirching the good character of economics students we should look for more convincing real-world evidence. So far I have found nothing. But my search did turn up the fascinating discovery — courtesy of the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel — that books about moral philosophy were more likely to be missing from libraries than other philosophy books. A deep academic interest in ethics appears to be correlated with larcenous behaviour. It makes you think. 

Ironically, the game that inspired Monopoly, The Landlord’s Game, was designed by the activist and writer Elizabeth Magie to teach lessons about a fairer taxation system, and then refined by a socialist professor of economics, Scott Nearing, and his students. Yes, the economics nerds were proposing a co-operative, pedagogical version of Monopoly. Alas their vision was eclipsed by the ruthless battle of attrition we all know today. 

Our own session of Monopoly might have been more fun if only my fellow players had embraced the constructive, co-operative spirit of economics. Alas, they did not, so our game finished in the traditional fashion. It petered out with no clear winner and several sore losers.  

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From Sanctions to Cooperation: The America-India (AI) Cooperation declaration

 

Fallacies of Capitalism 9 : The Entrepreneurial Genius Fallacy

 The Entrepreneurial Genius Fallacy

The "entrepreneurial genius" fallacy is aptly described by economist Mariana Mazzucato, who notes that it "overlooks the vital role of collective efforts, public infrastructure, and social support in fostering innovation and economic growth." While entrepreneurs undoubtedly contribute to economic progress, their success is intricately intertwined with broader societal factors.

As Nobel laureate Paul Romer eloquently emphasizes, "Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that make them more valuable." While entrepreneurs play a role in resource rearrangement, it is the collective investment in public infrastructure that enables them to thrive. Bridges and roads, as urbanist Jane Jacobs highlights, "are public goods that create more value than they consume," providing the vital arteries for commerce and enabling entrepreneurs to transport goods, connect with customers, and access markets.

The "entrepreneurial genius" fallacy disregards the indispensable role of knowledge and education, as emphasized by economist Joseph Stiglitz. He reminds us that "innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum" but requires a well-educated and skilled workforce. Entrepreneurs may provide vision and ideas, but it is the collective efforts of educators, researchers, and institutions that provide the foundation of knowledge and skills. The great innovations, as echoed by inventor Thomas Edison, are often the result of "one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration" of countless individuals working collectively.

Moreover, a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem is a testament to the power of collective support. As entrepreneur Reid Hoffman observes, "No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars." Entrepreneurship flourishes within supportive environments that provide access to capital, mentorship, and networking opportunities. These ecosystems involve various actors and institutions, as innovation scholar Carlota Perez suggests, forming "a collaborative and symbiotic space" that fuels entrepreneurial success.

Lastly, the significance of social safety nets in fostering entrepreneurship cannot be overstated. As economist Joseph Schumpeter asserts, "Entrepreneurial capitalism is not only the most efficient but also the most just form of economic organization precisely because it offers greater scope to human freedom than any other." Robust social support systems ensure individuals can take calculated risks and pursue entrepreneurship without fear of falling through the cracks. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen underscores this, stating, "The extent of entrepreneurship depends on the extent of the social opportunities that people have reason to choose."

In conclusion, recognizing the fallacy of the "entrepreneurial genius" narrative involves appreciating the contributions of collective efforts, public infrastructure, and social support in fostering innovation and economic growth. Entrepreneurs, as catalysts, rely on the foundation built by society as a whole. As economist Robert Reich eloquently sums it up, "Success is not the measure of one's worth; it's the measure of how many shoulders one stands on."

Who Killed Father Stan Swamy? All Political Parties are guilty!

 

The G20 should be leading the world out of the coronavirus crisis – but it's gone AWOL

In March it promised to support countries in need. Since then, virtual silence. Yet this pandemic requires bold, united leadership writes Gordon Brown in The Guardian

 

The G20’s video conference meeting in Brasilia on 26 March 26. Photograph: Marcos Correa/Brazilian Presidency/AFP via Getty Images


If coronavirus crosses all boundaries, so too must the war to vanquish it. But the G20, which calls itself the world’s premier international forum for international economic cooperation and should be at the centre of waging that war, has gone awol – absent without lending – with no plan to convene, online or otherwise, at any point in the next six months.

This is not just an abdication of responsibility; it is, potentially, a death sentence for the world’s poorest people, whose healthcare requires international aid and who the richest countries depend on to prevent a second wave of the disease hitting our shores.

On 26 March, just as the full force of the pandemic was becoming clear, the G20 promised “to use all available policy tools” to support countries in need. There would be a “swift implementation” of an emergency response, it said, and its efforts would be “amplified” over the coming weeks. As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said at the time, emerging markets and developing nations needed at least $2.5tn (£2,000bn) in support. But with new Covid-19 cases round the world running above 100,000 a day and still to peak, the vacuum left by G20 inactivity means that allocations from the IMF and the World Bank to poorer countries will remain a fraction of what is required.

And yet the economic disruption, and the decline in hours worked across the world, is now equivalent to the loss of more than 300 million full-time jobs, according to the International Labour Organization. For the first time this century, global poverty is rising, and three decades of improving living standards are now in reverse. An additional 420 million more people will fall into extreme poverty and, according to the World Food Programme, 265 million face malnutrition. Developing economies and emerging markets have none of the fiscal room for manoeuvre that richer countries enjoy, and not surprisingly more than 100 such countries have applied to the IMF for emergency support.

The G20’s failure to meet is all the more disgraceful because the global response to Covid-19 should this month be moving from its first phase, the rescue operation, to its second, a comprehensive recovery plan – and at its heart there should be a globally coordinated stimulus with an agreed global growth plan.

To make this recovery sustainable the “green new deal” needs to go global; and to help pay for it, a coordinated blitz is required on the estimated $7.4tn hidden untaxed in offshore havens.

As a group of 200 former leaders state in today’s letter to the G20, the poorest countries need international aid within days, not weeks or months. Debt relief is the quickest way of releasing resources. Until now, sub-Saharan Africa has been spending more on debt repayments than on health. The $80bn owed by the 76 poorest nations should be waived until at least December 2021.

But poor countries also need direct cash support. The IMF should dip into its $35bn reserves, and the development banks should announce they are prepared to raise additional money.

A second trillion can be raised by issuing – as we did in the global financial crisis – new international money (known as special drawing rights), which can be converted into dollars or local currency. To their credit, European countries like the UK, France and Germany have already lent some of this money to poorer countries and, if the IMF agreed, $500bn could be issued immediately and $500bn more by 2022.

And we must declare now that any new vaccine and cure will be made freely available to all who need it – and resist US pressure by supporting the World Health Organization in its efforts to ensure the poorest nations do not lose out. This Thursday, at the pledging conference held for the global vaccine alliance in London, donor countries should contribute the $7bn needed to help make immunisation more widely available.

No country can eliminate infectious diseases unless all countries do so. And it is because we cannot deal with the health nor the economic emergency without bringing the whole world together that Donald Trump’s latest counterproposal – to parade a few favoured leaders in Washington in September – is no substitute for a G20 summit.

His event would exclude Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and most of Asia, and would represent only 2 billion of the world’s 7 billion people. Yet the lesson of history is that, at key moments of crisis, we require bold, united leadership, and to resist initiatives that will be seen as “divide and rule”.

So, it is time for the other 19 G20 members to demand an early summit, and avert what would be the greatest global social and economic policy failure of our generation.

Whether Armenia, the Nazis or Isis – if you're going to commit genocide, you can’t do it without the help of local people

Robert Fisk in The Independent


How do you organise a successful genocide – in Turkish Armenia a century ago, in Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1940s, or in the Middle East today? A remarkable investigation by a young Harvard scholar – focusing on the slaughter of Armenians in a single Turkish Ottoman city 103 years ago – suggests the answer is simple: a genocidal government must have the local support of every branch of respectable society: tax officials, judges, magistrates, junior police officers, clergymen, lawyers, bankers and, most painfully, the neighbours of the victims.
Umit Kurt’s detailed paper on the slaughter of the Armenians of Antep in southern Turkey in 1915, which appears in the latest edition of the Journal of Genocide Research, concentrates on the dispossession, rape and murder of just 20,000 of the one and a half million Armenian Christians slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks in the first holocaust of the 20th century. It not only details the series of carefully prepared deportations from Antep and the pathetic hopes of those who were temporarily spared – a story tragically familiar to so many stories of the Jewish ghettoes of Eastern Europe – but lists the property and possessions which the city authorities and peasants sought to lo ot from those they sent to their deaths.

The local perpetrators thus seized farms, pistachio groves, orchards, vineyards, coffee houses, shops, watermills, church property, schools and a library. Officially this was called “expropriation” or “confiscation”, but as Umit Kurt points out, “huge numbers of people were bound together in a circle of profit that was at the same time a circle of complicity”. The author, born in modern-day Gaziantep in Turkey – the original Antep – is of Kurdish-Arab origin, and his spare, dry prose makes his 21-page thesis all the more frightening.

He draws no parallels between the Armenian holocaust – a phrase the Israelis themselves use of the Armenians – and the Jewish holocaust nor the current genocidal outrages in the modern Middle East. But no one can read Umit Kurt’s words without being reminded of the armies of ghosts who haunt later history; the collaborators of Nazi-occupied France, of the Polish collaborators of the Nazis in Warsaw and Krakow and of the tens of thousands of Sunni Muslim civilians who allowed Isis to enslave Yazidi women and destroy the Christians of Nineveh. These victims, too, found themselves dispossessed by their neighbours, their homes looted and their property sold off by the officials who should have protected them as they faced their own extermination.

One of the most powerful of Kurt’s arguments is that a central government cannot succeed in exterminating a minority of its people without the support of their fellow citizens: the Ottomans needed the Muslims of Antep to carry out the deportation orders in 1915 – rewarded with the property of those they were helping to liquidate – just as the local people needed the central authority to legitimise what we would today call war crimes.

Umit Kurt is one of the few academics to recognise the growing economic power of the Ottoman Armenians in the decades before the genocide; “the Muslim community’s envy and resentment,” he writes, “played a central role in the hatemongering atmosphere”. So, too, did repeated Ottoman claims that the Armenians were helping Turkey’s Allied enemies – the same “stab in the back” betrayal routine which Hitler used to rally the Nazis against communists and Jews in the Weimar Republic. In the Middle East today, it is the “infidels” – the “Crusader” (ie pro-Western) Christians – who have been fleeing for their lives for supposedly betraying Islam.

You would have to have the proverbial heart of stone not to be moved by the story of the Antep Armenians in the spring of 1915. Although initially harassed by the murderous Ottoman “Special Organisation” – Teskilat-i Mahsusa, the nearest equivalent to the Nazi Einsatzgruppen of the 1940s – and subject to temporary arrest, the Armenians of Antep were, at first, left alone. But they saw Armenian transports from other towns passing through Antep, the first containing 300 women and children, “injured, their wounds infected and their clothes in tatters”. For two more months, deportation convoys moved through the town and into a wilderness of suffering. “Armenian girls and boys had been kidnapped; women’s belongings and money had been plundered; they had been raped publicly with the active complicity of gendarmeries and government officials.”

Like the Jews of Europe who were initially left untouched by the genocide of their co-religionists, the Antep Armenians could not believe their possible fate. “In spite of everything that was happening around us…” one eyewitness wrote, “the number of those who buried their heads in the sand like an ostrich was not small. These people convinced themselves that they were happy, and they were trying to deceive themselves into believing that a similar deportation was not possible for Aintab [sic] and that nothing bad would happen to them.”

Like brave Polish families and the few Oskar Schindlers of Nazi Germany, a few courageous Turks opposed the Armenian genocide. Celal Bey, the governor of Aleppo – 61 miles from Antep – refused to deport Armenians. But he was dismissed. And the Christian Armenians of Antep were doomed.

On 30 July, 50 Armenian families were ordered to leave in 24 hours. First, only Orthodox Christians were sent away, leaving all their valuables behind. A survivor recalls that “our neighbours, the Turks, were singing from their homes, we could hear them…‘The dog is on its way’…” A week later, another 50 families were deported, only to be attacked by militia bandits led by the manager of the local Agricultural Bank. Inside Antep, women were raped and sent to local “harems”. A local village head (“mukhtar”) threw six Armenian children from a mountain to their deaths. The convoys grew larger – 1,500 Armenians from Antep on 13 August, for example – and sent, by train or on foot, to Aleppo and Deir ez-Zour. Then came the turn of Catholic Armenians.

A pitiful account survives of a thanksgiving service held by Protestants – the only Armenians to escape liquidation so far – in which one of their leaders miserably pleaded with his people to do nothing which might annoy the Turkish authorities. “Let no one take into his home a child or anyone else who has been told to go, whether they be of those passing through the city as refugees or from among our own friends and relatives in the town.” No good Samaritans there. But of course, the Protestants, too, were deported. Of 600 Protestant families, almost 200 had been annihilated at Deir ez-Zour by January 1916.

The local Antep police chief was promoted for his enthusiasm. In the so-called “deportation committees” who decided the Armenians’ fate could be found Antep’s local member of parliament and his brother, a variety of local officials, the president of the municipality, two officials in the finance department, two judges, a magistrate, the first secretary of Antep’s court, a former mufti, two imams, two ulema, two village sheiks, the secretary of a religious charity, a doctor, a lawyer and the director of an orphanage. “No member of these local worthies,” writes Umit Kurt, “did anything to protest the deportations, hide the vulnerable, or stop the convoys.” Of Antep’s 32,000 Armenians, 20,000 perished in the genocide.

But truly the ghosts survive.

By chance this week, I was finishing Martin Winstone’s shocking history of Nazi rule in the occupied “general government” of Poland, The Dark Heart of Hitler’s Europe, and discovered that the Jews – and Poles – of Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin often went through exactly the same process of false hope, collaboration and annihilation as the Armenians of Antep.

While most Poles behaved with courage, dignity and heroism, a minority of gentiles – and this is why the current government of Poland is threatening to punish anyone who talks of Polish collaboration with the Nazis – “participated directly in the murder process”, according to Winstone. They included the Polish “blue” police – ordinary cops in their usual blue uniforms – but also local peasants in the Lublin area, many of whom robbed their victims before beating them to death. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fugitive Jews fell victim to perpetrators “who were village heads, members of the village guards formed during the occupation, or blue policemen acting unofficially”. When 50 Jews were discovered hiding in Szczebrzeszyn, a “crowd looked on”. A powerful factor in the murder and denunciation of Jews, the author concludes, was “a lust for Jewish property”.

And today, in the Middle East, we know all too well this familiar pattern of local villainy turned against neighbours, Christian girls in Nineveh seized by Islamists, Yazidi families torn apart and their homes looted by local Sunni militias. When Isis fled the town of Hafter, east of Aleppo, I found the documents of the local Isis courts; they proved that Syrian civilians had betrayed their cousins to the Egyptian judges of the Islamist courts, that neighbours had sought financial reward by denouncing those who had lived beside them for decades. In Bosnia in the 1990s, as we know, Serb neighbours slaughtered their Muslim compatriots, raped their women and seized their homes.

No, this is not something new – but it is something we too often forget. When my own father was asked by the British government in 1940 to name those in Maidstone, Kent, who might collaborate with the Nazis after an invasion, he put one of his best friends, a local businessman, on his list of those who would assist the Germans. Ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass sectarian atrocities might be directed from Constantinople, Berlin, Belgrade or Mosul. But war criminals need their people to complete their projects or – to use an old German expression – “to help to give the wheel a push”.

Thanks to the internet, there are now millions of cyber Rupert Murdochs

Mark Steel in The Independent

The scientists who invented the internet believed they were creating the means for humanity to reach a heightened level of co-operation never considered possible. People from remote corners of the globe could communicate, bringing an understanding of the spectrum of human experience within instant reach of us all.

And that’s how it’s worked out, with discourse such as “Why you not pis off Trottsky scum!” – “Shutt you mouth and join Tories Blairite yak droppings”, advancing the discussion about the Labour party on Twitter and website forums, to enlighten us all.

This process hasn’t just taken place in politics. On sporting forums, someone may advance the premise “Man U rule Arsnal go and do 1 Wenger lik my ars”, and you find yourself considering the points made all day, often reading it many times, to find something new in the sub-text you hadn’t noticed before.

On YouTube, when a local band uploads a song, it will be followed by a series of comments. The first will say “awesome guys” from a friend, then comes 80 more such as “I’d rather eat my own liver with gravy made from the green stuff in Olympic pool than lissen to that dog sick”.

There’s probably a gardening forum, in which someone writes “I’d say now is about the right time of year to plant your begonias.” Then someone replies “That shows what u know about gardning u compost face donky breath bet cant even tell rose from venis flytrap knobhead nippelface hope u trellis falls down kils runner beens lol I tell u what its write time of year to plant tree up you arse”.

I expect the Buddhist Meditation community has its own website, on which followers can share their experiences of finding inner peace, in which a convert may suggest “I learned to love through the mindfulness of breathing, and find my sense of place has found a new calm”

And the first reply will be “my temple beet yous anyday u chant nothing but shite its om not um any Buddhist know that our meditashin only way to troo peace we tear your robe up eesy hope u reinkarnate as wosp”.

Twitter, especially, offers a marvellous service to people who take everything literally. For example, on the one hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World War, it was suggested by the government that we remember the occasion by turning off our lights in the evening. So I mentioned on Twitter “I’ve done my bit to commemorate the soldiers, I turned off my headlights as I was driving up the M23.”

Back came a torrent of abuse that I still haven’t finished sifting through, so it’s lovely to know people care.

There is probably no combination of words you can put on Twitter that someone won’t go berserk about. You could write “What a lovely sunset over Dorset this evening”, and someone will reply “not so lovely if you suffer from Sunset Aversion Depressive Dusk Syndrome actually. Think before you insult SADDS victims please Mark”.

The advanced student of Twitter anger won’t even need a real comment, they can reply with fury to nothing. I noticed someone firing a series of fuming comments about me for “mocking the mentally ill”. Eventually she acknowledged she’d mixed me up with someone else entirely, then without missing a beat carried on being furious about something else that probably hadn’t happened.

This is how the internet has honed our debating skills, as no longer are we bound to the tyranny of having to make sure we’re talking about the right person. We can scream “Why should we take any notice of Clare Balding’s opinions on the Olympics when she ruined Zimbabwe.”

After a couple of weeks we might accept we’ve mixed her up with Robert Mugabe but the original point is still valid.

This is why sometimes, it’s a relief to see one of those petitions that says “Please sign to stop new park bench being built as this will destroy one of Lewisham’s most colourful cluster of dandelions.”

The wonder of the internet, it was suggested, would be to take power from the old media and allow everyone an outlet for their views. We would all, in effect, own a newspaper.

But this week The Times newspaper published a story that Billy Bragg, at the Edinburgh Festival, denounced Jeremy Corbyn for “not reaching out to the wider electorate”, having previously supported him.

This was an imaginative effort, as what Billy said was he still backed Corbyn, and “hoped he would reach out to the wider electorate.”

This is a new and exciting way of reporting news. If Mo Farah’s coach says “I hope Mo starts strongly in the 5000 metres final”, they can report that as “Coach turns on Farah…the previously supportive trainer insisted Mo hasn’t been starting strongly enough, leading some athletes to wonder whether the trainer may decide to replace him with Owen Smith.”

One lesson of this is the worrying revelation that newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch may sometimes distort the facts in some way.

But the reaction to the story on social media was that many Labour members opposed to Corbyn were triumphant, while Corbyn supporters denounced Bragg, and were especially angry that he’d “given an interview to The Times” which he hadn’t.

The genius of this is it means people were angry about Billy Bragg, because someone they trust had spoken to a paper which they believe makes up stories, having read this in the paper they believe makes up stories.

Somehow the internet has made the old papers even more powerful than before.

Soon we’ll need clinics, where the addicted angry people can be weaned off the internet, wandering through gardens occasionally calling the rockery “scum” and writing “#traitor” in the mud about one of the fish until they’re cured.

Selfish traits not favoured by evolution, study shows

By Melissa HogenboomScience reporter, BBC News

Evolution does not favour selfish people, according to new research.

This challenges a previous theory which suggested it was preferable to put yourself first.

Instead, it pays to be co-operative, shown in a model of "the prisoner's dilemma", a scenario of game theory - the study of strategic decision-making.

Published in Nature Communications, the team says their work shows that exhibiting only selfish traits would have made us go extinct.

Game theory involves devising "games" to simulate situations of conflict or co-operation. It allows researchers to unravel complex decision-making strategies and to establish why certain types of behaviour among individuals emerge.

Freedom or prison

A team from Michigan State University used a model of the prisoner's dilemma game, where two suspects who are interrogated in separate prison cells must decide whether or not to inform on each other.

In the model, each person is offered a deal for freedom if they inform on the other, putting their opponent in jail for six months. However, this scenario will only be played out if the opponent chooses not to inform.

If both "prisoners" choose to inform (defection) they will both get three months in prison, but if they both stay silent (co-operation) they will both only get a jail term of one month.

The eminent mathematician John Nash showed that the optimum strategy was not to co-operate in the prisoner's dilemma game.

"For many years, people have asked that if he [Nash] is right, then why do we see co-operation in the animal kingdom, in the microbial world and in humans," said lead author Christoph Adami of Michigan State University.

Mean extinction

The answer, he explained, was that communication was not previously taken into account.

"The two prisoners that are interrogated are not allowed to talk to each other. If they did they would make a pact and be free within a month. But if they were not talking to each other, the temptation would be to rat the other out.

"Being mean can give you an advantage on a short timescale but certainly not in the long run - you would go extinct."

These latest findings contradict a 2012 study where it was found that selfish people could get ahead of more co-operative partners, which would create a world full of selfish beings.

This was dubbed a "mean and selfish" strategy and depended on a participant knowing their opponent's previous decision and adapting their strategy accordingly.

Crucially, in an evolutionary environment, knowing your opponent's decision would not be advantageous for long because your opponent would evolve the same recognition mechanism to also know you, Dr Adami explained.

This is exactly what his team found, that any advantage from defecting was short-lived. They used a powerful computer model to run hundreds of thousands of games, simulating a simple exchange of actions that took previous communication into account.

"What we modelled in the computer were very general things, namely decisions between two different behaviours. We call them co-operation and defection. But in the animal world there are all kinds of behaviours that are binary, for example to flee or to fight," Dr Adami told BBC News.

"It's almost like what we had in the cold war, an arms race - but these arms races occur all the time in evolutionary biology."

Social insects

Prof Andrew Coleman of Leicester University, UK, said this new work "put a break on over-zealous interpretations" of the previous strategy, which proposed that manipulative, selfish strategies would evolve.

"Darwin himself was puzzled about the co-operation you observe in nature. He was particularly struck by social insects," he explained.

"You might think that natural selection should favour individuals that are exploitative and selfish, but in fact we now know after decades of research that this is an oversimplified view of things, particularly if you take into account the selfish gene feature of evolution.

"It's not individuals that have to survive, its genes, and genes just use individual organisms - animals or humans - as vehicles to propagate themselves."

"Selfish genes" therefore benefit from having co-operative organisms.