Synonyms
Definition
Cheating is a strategy or behavior that exploits social agreements of cooperation; from a genetic fitness perspective, cheating benefits the cheat while causing detriment to the cooperator.
Introduction
Cheats or free-riders are organisms that take advantage of the cooperative social behaviors of other organisms either within or outside of their species in order to obtain resources and/or mating opportunities while incurring less cost than would normally be associated with their acquisition. Ghoul et al. (2014, p. 319) define cheating as “(i) a trait that is beneficial to a cheat and costly to a cooperator in terms of inclusive fitness (ii) when these benefits and costs arise from the actor directing a cooperative behavior toward the cheat, rather than the intended recipient.” However, the term “cheat” has been used somewhat inconsistently throughout the evolutionary and ecological literature leading some researchers to...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Book, A. S., Quinsey, V. L., & Langford, D. (2007). Psychopathy and the perception of affect and vulnerability. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 34(4), 531–544. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854806293554.
Buller, D. J. (2005). Evolutionary psychology: The emperor’s new paradigm. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(6), 277–283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2005.04.003.
Burke, D. (2014). Why isn’t everyone an evolutionary psychologist? Frontiers in Psychology, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00910.
Clutton-Brock, T. (2009). Cooperation between non-kin in animal societies. Nature, 462(7269), 51–57. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08366.
Cosmides, L. (1989). The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition, 31(3), 187–276. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(89)90023-1.
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1992). Cognitive adaptations for social exchange. In J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 163–228). New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2006.1991.
Cosmides, L., Barrett, H. C., & Tooby, J. (2010). Adaptive specializations, social exchange, and the evolution of human intelligence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(Supplement_2), 9007–9014. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0914623107.
Daly, M., & Wilson, M. (1983). Sex, evolution, and behavior (2nd ed.). Boston: Willard Grant Press.
Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish Gene (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dawkins, R., & Krebs, J. R. (1979). The evolution of adaptation by natural selection. Biological Sciences, 205, 489–511.
Douglas, A. E. (2008). Conflict, cheats and the persistence of symbioses. New Phytologist, 177(4), 849–858. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2007.02326.x.
Fehr, E., & Schmidt, K. (1999). A theory of fairness, competition, and cooperation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114(3), 817–868. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/2586885.
Gervais, M. M., Kline, M., Ludmer, M., George, R., & Manson, J. H. (2013). The strategy of psychopathy: Primary psychopathic traits predict defection on low-value relationships. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 280(1757). https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2773.
Ghoul, M., Griffin, A. S., & West, S. A. (2014). Toward an evolutionary definition of cheating. Evolution, 68(2), 318–331. https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.12266.
Gollwitzer, M., Rothmund, T., Alt, B., & Jekel, M. (2012). Victim sensitivity and the accuracy of social judgments. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(8), 975–984. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212440887.
Gollwitzer, M., Süssenbach, P., & Hannuschke, M. (2015). Victimization experiences and the stabilization of victim sensitivity. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00439.
Griggs, R. A., & Cox, J. R. (1982). The elusive thematic-materials effect in Wason’s selection task. British Journal of Psychology, 73(3), 407–420. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1982.tb01823.x.
Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The Genetical evolution of social behavior II. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, 17–52. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203790427-5.
Harris, M. (1998). Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture. Illinois: Waveland Press.
Manktelow, K. I., & Evans, J. S. B. T. (1979). Facilitation of reasoning by realism: Effect or non-effect? British Journal of Psychology, 70(4), 477–488. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1979.tb01720.x.
Maynard Smith, J. (1974). The theory of games and the evolution of animal conflicts. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 47(1), 209–221. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-5193(74)90110-6.
Mealey, L. (1995). The sociobiology of sociopathy: An integrated evolutionary model. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 18(3), 523–599. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004.
Nesse, R. M. (1990). Evolutionary explanations of emotions. Human Nature, 1(3), 261–289. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02733986.
Price, M. E., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2002). Punitive sentiment as an anti-free rider psychological device. Evolution and Human Behavior, 23(3), 203–231. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-5138(01)00093-9.
Tooby, J., Cosmides, L., & Price, M. E. (2006). Cognitive adaptations for n-person exchange: The evolutionary roots of organizational behavior. Managerial and Decision Economics, 27(2–3), 103–129. https://doi.org/10.1002/mde.1287.
Trivers, R. L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 46(1), 35–57. https://doi.org/10.1086/406755.
Trivers, R. (1985). Social Evolution. California: The Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company..
Verplaetse, J., Vanneste, S., & Braeckman, J. (2007). You can judge a book by its cover: The sequel. A kernel of truth in predictive cheating detection. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28(4), 260–271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2007.04.006.
Wason, P. C. (1968). Reasoning about a rule. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 20(3), 273–281. https://doi.org/10.1080/14640746808400161.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Dye, J., Solomon, E. (2020). Problem of Cheating. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1210-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1210-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences