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Discovery: Crossing Divides: The Cooperative Species

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23/04/2018 GMT

The Cooperative Species

Crossing Divides

BBC World Service - Discovery, Crossing Divides, The Cooperative SpeciesSearch BBC

People are incredibly rude to each other on social media. Much ruder than they would ever be face to face. The great potential of the internet to bring humanity together in a glorious collaborating network seems naïve – instead of embracing a massive extension of our social circles, we seem to revert to tribalism and conflict online. And while we generally conduct our real-life interactions with strangers with politeness and respect, online, we can be horrible. 

But it was our human ability to communicate ideas across networks of people that enabled us to so successfully solve life’s challenges and to build the modern world.  Gaia Vince travels to Yale University to meet the researchers who are studying how we cooperate today and why it can go wrong when we communicate online. 

Part of the Crossing Divides season. 

(Photo: Row of children hugging Credit: Kieferpix/Getty Images)

Discovery: Crossing Divides

Gaia Vince meets the scientists studying our built in human behaviour and asks how their discoveries could increase cooperation.

Humans have become the most successful species on earth because of our ability to cooperate. Often we help strangers when there is no obvious benefit to us as individuals. But today in the age when social media and the internet could be seen as a way of bringing people together more than ever, the opposite is happening. In this two-part series for Discovery science writer Gaia Vince meets the psychologists, evolutionary biologists and neuroscientists who are studying our built in human behaviour in groups and asks how their discoveries can guide projects to increase cooperation.

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