In an Acculturated piece I wrote
back in October called “The Culture
of Cheating,” I mentioned the deeply corrosive effect that cheating has on
a personal level. It can be easy to rationalize it when you’ve convinced
yourself that cheating isn’t hurting anyone. But even if you’re never found
out, it is a self-betrayal that shreds your integrity and your self-image, and
repairing that internal damage is no easy task. And what about the external damage,
to the broader society? Biology tells us that cheating equals extinction.
Biological populations, from microorganisms
to humans, depend on the cooperation of their members in order to thrive as a
society. But in any cooperative activity, there is the risk of “cheaters”
benefitting from the productivity of others while making no contribution of
their own. Take the slacker roommate, for example, who refuses to do his share
of the housework. Cheaters exploit the system, taking without giving, with destabilizing
consequences for the social unit as a whole. What happens if enough of this
behavior spreads throughout the population? How much cooperation is necessary
to maintain a society?
In a new
study published this week in the PLOS Biology journal, MIT researchers
Alvaro Sanchez and Jeff Gore (no relation to Al) investigated the competition
between cooperating and cheating strains of a yeast colony. They found that,
depending on the mix of strains, the yeast either achieves a stable coexistence
or collapses for lack of cooperation. In other words, a yeast society dominated
by non-producers – cheaters – is more likely to face extinction than one consisting
entirely of producers, or cooperators.
Societies can absorb some of this
behavior and still function successfully. Sanchez and Gore found that if the
population starts off with sufficient cooperators, then the yeast ends up with a
stable mix. But if the proportion of cheaters is too high, the colony dies out.
Sure, that’s yeast, but this experiment obviously serves up a lesson for
human society as well, especially an economic one. Cheaters weaken the whole,
and under conditions of stress or danger, when society most needs unity, cheaters
can take everyone else down with them. A society in which too many drain away
the productivity of the cooperators is doomed.
Here’s an example in microcosm. As I worked on this piece last weekend I happened
to be watching, again, the 2012 action flick Act of Valor, which featured real Navy SEALs depicting carefully
orchestrated, dangerous missions, and it occurred to me that here was a neat demonstration
of Sanchez and Gore’s study. Navy SEALs must have absolute trust in each other.
Everyone pulls his weight or risks jeopardizing the mission and/or getting himself
(or more importantly, his teammates) killed. A “cheater” in a SEAL “colony,” to
put it in biological terms, would most likely bring about the unit’s
“extinction.” And that’s why cheaters are weeded out. Real-life SEAL Lieutenant
Jeff Eggers says,
“If you are the sort of person who sucks the energy out of the group without
giving anything back, then you are going to go away.”
Of course, Sanchez and Gore’s study refers to a specific kind
of cheating – leeching off the productivity of others. But other manifestations
of it, such as infidelity, also have social and cultural consequences in
addition to the personal havoc it wreaks. Either way, personally or socially,
there is no escaping the consequences, and they’re always bad.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 5/1/13)
