Abstract Cooperation often comes with the temptation to defect and benefit at the cost of others. This tension between cooperation and defection is best captured in social dilemmas like the Prisoner's Dilemma. Adult humans have specific strategies to maintain cooperation during Prisoner's Dilemma interactions. Yet, little is known about the ontogenetic and phylogenetic origins of human decision-making strategies in conflict scenarios. To shed light on this question, we compared the strategies used by chimpanzees and 5-year old children to overcome a social dilemma. In our task, waiting for the partner to act first produced the best results for the subject. Alternatively, they could mutually cooperate and divide the rewards. Our findings indicate that the two species differed substantially in their strategies to solve the task. Chimpanzees became more strategic across the study period by waiting longer to act in the social dilemma. Children developed a more efficient strategy of taking turns to reciprocate their rewards. Moreover, children used specific types of communication to coordinate with their partners. These results suggest that while both species behaved strategically to overcome a conflict situation, only children engaged in active cooperation to solve a social dilemma.

中文翻译：

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黑猩猩和孩子在社会困境中避免相互背叛

摘要 合作往往伴随着背叛和以他人为代价获益的诱惑。合作与背叛之间的这种紧张关系在像囚徒困境这样的社会困境中得到了最好的体现。成年人有特定的策略来在囚徒困境互动中保持合作。然而，人们对冲突情景中人类决策策略的个体发育和系统发育起源知之甚少。为了阐明这个问题，我们比较了黑猩猩和 5 岁儿童克服社交困境所使用的策略。在我们的任务中，等待合作伙伴首先采取行动为主题产生了最好的结果。或者，他们可以相互合作并分配奖励。我们的研究结果表明，这两个物种在解决任务的策略上存在很大差异。在整个研究期间，黑猩猩在社会困境中等待更长时间，从而变得更具战略性。孩子们制定了一种更有效的策略，轮流回报他们的奖励。此外，孩子们使用特定类型的交流来与他们的合作伙伴进行协调。这些结果表明，虽然两个物种都采取了战略性的行动来克服冲突局势，但只有儿童参与积极合作以解决社会困境。