How to Promote Cooperation for the Well-Being of Individuals and Societies

The most successful human societies are those that have found better ways to promote cooperative behaviour. Yet, cooperation is individually costly and, therefore, it often breaks down, leading to enormous social costs. In this article, I review the literature on the mechanisms and interventions that are known to promote cooperative behaviour in social dilemmas. In iterated or non-anonymous interactions, I focus on the five rules of cooperation, as well as on structural changes, involving the cost or the benefit of cooperation, or the size of the interacting group. In one-shot and anonymous interactions, I focus on the role of internalised social heuristics as well as moral preferences for doing the right thing. For each account, I summarize the available experimental evidence. I hope that this review can be helpful for social scientists working on cooperation and for leaders and policy makers who aim at promoting social cooperation or teamwork.