The developmental psychologist exploring the forces that shape children’s cooperation
Katherine McAuliffe is studying when, why, and where cooperation works best
Katherine McAuliffe is a developmental psychology researcher at Boston College. Katherine studies children in an effort to understand the behaviours that promote cooperative societies. Her ultimate goal is to nurture cooperative behaviours in order to help society thrive. Annie Brookman-Byrne talks with Katherine about children’s striking responses to injustice and explains how cooperation is a feature of both her research and her work life.
Annie Brookman-Byrne: Why should we try to understand cooperation?
Katherine McAuliffe: Cooperation is central to many aspects of human life, from the hyperlocal to the global. How do members of a family work together to manage a household? How do countries work together to tackle climate change, pandemics, and rising inequality? The ability to collaborate with others to solve problems and reach goals that would be unattainable working alone is one of the defining features of our species, and it has helped us deal with many different kinds of adversity.
Research on cooperation can help us understand when, why, and where cooperation works best and, by extension, how we can design systems and processes to promote it. I hope that this work can be used to foster environments that nurture behaviours like honesty, fairness and standing up against injustice – these are central to tackling problems that can only be solved by working together.
ABB: How are you studying these qualities in children, and what are you learning about their ability to cooperate?
KMcA: In my lab, we mainly study children between the ages of 4 and 12, but we also work with adolescents, adults and, occasionally, nonhuman animals. I’ve studied cooperation in dogs, mongooses, meerkats, and even fish! We are seeking a better understanding of the kinds of behaviours that are important to cooperative societies. For instance, we are currently exploring how children make decisions about fairness, honesty, loyalty, trustworthiness, and generosity.
We’re also interested in when and how children start to stand up for each other when someone has behaved in an uncooperative manner. If a child is unfair to a classmate, for example, at what age and under what conditions do other children intervene, even when they themselves are not directly affected? We run studies close to home in the United States, and we also work with children across a wide range of other countries. At the heart of our lab’s work is a shared passion for understanding how culture shapes and sustains cooperation during a child’s development and beyond.
We find that children are cooperative, even early in development. Across societies, children are equipped with some of the key ingredients for thriving cooperative societies: They help others, they react negatively to unfairness, and they intervene against wrongdoing. Children actively cooperate, while also benefiting from the cooperation of others.
ABB: How did you become interested in cooperation in children?
KMcA: I followed a rather indirect path to where I am today, but throughout all the detours and side roads I have remained fascinated by questions surrounding cooperation and culture. As an undergraduate, I studied marine biology in Eastern Canada and, while pursuing my degree, I was fortunate enough to join a research lab studying social learning and culture in whales and dolphins. The head of the lab, Hal Whitehead, was a terrific mentor and lab leader. Even as a new, junior person in the lab I felt my contributions were always welcomed.
That set a template for the kinds of research environments I was attracted to as well as the one I have tried to build at Boston College. I was drawn not only to cooperation and culture as a focus of my research, but also to the opportunity to cooperate with my colleagues on a day-to-day basis. Had it not been for lab experiences like the one I had early on, I’m not sure I would have stayed in the field. That was my first introduction to an aspect of science that I love just as much as the work itself: the chance to work with others in collaborative groups.
“Across societies, children are equipped with some of the key ingredients for thriving cooperative societies.”
ABB: Has your understanding of cooperation had any impact in your personal life?
KMcA:I have two kids at home in the age group that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about over the last ten years. You might think that there would be a lot of cross-pollination between my work-self and my home-self, but perhaps surprisingly, that’s generally not the case. In almost all ways, my science-self is quite separate from my parent-self.
However, there’s one exception, and that is when it comes to my kids’ social relationships. One byproduct of having studied children’s early emerging cooperative behaviours is that I am fairly hands-off about fostering friendships on behalf of my children. Indeed, doing so might seem like a ridiculous notion to people in a lot of societies, but here in the U.S., it is quite common for adults to play a central role in the formation of children’s social relationships.
Research tells us that children across diverse societies are well equipped to form and sustain their own social relationships. This is reflected quite impressively in children’s responses to injustice. From their early years, children identify and react to situations in which others have been treated poorly, and they go out of their way to do something about it. In our studies, this comes in the form peer punishment: Children will pay a small cost to punish others for being unfair, even when they themselves are not the victims of unfairness. Children are active agents in supporting cooperative relationships from a very young age, and this gives me a lot of confidence in my kids’ abilities to regulate their own social lives.
“Children are active agents in supporting cooperative relationships from a very young age.”
ABB: What will you be studying next?
KMcA: I am really excited about pursuing the idea that cooperation is contagious. Much of the theory on cooperation suggests that we should always do the bare minimum in any cooperative interaction, if we can get away with it. For example, if someone else is willing to do the lion’s share of the work in a group project, the best strategy is to sit back, relax, and free-ride on their contributions. Of course, this theory seems to be borne out in plenty of examples in the real world. But we also see the opposite: One person working really hard in a cooperative interaction actually encourages others to do the same.
In my view, we haven’t studied this aspect of cooperation enough, and I am excited to pursue this “contagion” effect in children. If we see good evidence for contagion—if cooperation by one child inspires cooperation in another—we might rethink classrooms and other child-oriented spaces. Could we help children to encourage cooperation in their peers?
Footnotes
Katherine McAuliffe studies the forces that shape and sustain cooperative societies. Work in her lab—the Cooperation Lab at Boston College—combines approaches from psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology to address big questions about the origins of cooperation. For instance, how do children acquire norms of cooperation across societies, when do they begin to comply with these norms, and when do they start enforcing them in others? Katherine believes that a better understanding of the psychology that underlies cooperative norms allows us to harness the power of those norms to promote cooperation in children and adults alike. Katherine is a 2022-2024 Jacobs Foundation Research Fellow.
Twitter/X: @kmcaulif1
Lab/group websites: bccooperationlab.com & bcvirtueproject.com
This interview has been edited for clarity.
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