理性观视野中的人类合作行为

Previous research on human cooperative behavior has mostly focused on the hypothesis of human nature and whether people are willing to cooperate, with relatively less attention paid to the rational hypothesis and whether people can cooperate. Based on a comprehensive review and analysis of cooperative behavior theories from both rational and irrational perspectives in history, this article proposes and argues for the bounded rationality cooperative view, with the aim of enhancing or deepening the understanding of human cooperative behavior. The study of human cooperative behavior from a fully rational perspective originated from the concept of "rational economic man" in classical economics, and was later systematized by neoclassical economics, ultimately forming a theoretical system with rich connotations. Rational economic agents are fully rational individuals in the instrumental sense, possessing stable and orderly preferences, complete information, and impeccable computational power. They will perform conscious and rational calculations in a logical and systematic manner to obtain a complete sequence of preferences and subjective probability distributions of future outcomes, and then choose the behavior that best satisfies their preferences among all behaviors, in order to maximize their personal interests. Based on this viewpoint, researchers have explored the complex cognitive processes of cooperative behavior from different perspectives such as rational decision-making, cognitive judgment, and risk assessment. The study of cooperative behavior from an irrational perspective comes from disciplines such as biology and sociology, which view cooperation as a social behavior that individuals would not choose to engage in if they were making purely rational analyses and calculations. People expect something to happen and take action based on that expectation, and they understand that if it does not happen as they expected, the loss brought by this action will be greater than the benefit brought by it happening as expected. Therefore, cooperation is an irrational choice that individuals make when faced with an unknown event where the expected loss exceeds the expected benefit. Following this viewpoint, researchers examine how internal (e.g., individual traits and attitudes) and external factors (e.g., customs, norms, culture, and institutions) affect people's cooperative behavior. Based on a large body of literature on bounded rationality in contemporary cognitive psychology and our original research over the years, we propose the concept of bounded rationality cooperation. We agree with the view that cooperation should be understood as a decision-making process, and we do not believe that people will make cooperative decisions based solely on their own traits, attitudes, or external pressures without thinking. However, this decision making process is not based on completely rational calculation and analysis, and particularly does not agree with the assumption of homogeneity and zero rational computational cost implied by this theory. The fully rational cooperative view focuses on the profit and loss outcomes of decision making, but ignores the time and mental costs involved in the decision making process. When these costs are taken into account, cooperative decision making is not based on completely rational calculation and analysis, but on heuristics that are more in line with human cognitive characteristics. Based on this, we propose and argue the following three propositions: (1) Cooperative decision making is a heuristic process of bounded rationality; (2) Minimizing mental cost is one of the important goals of cooperative decision making; (3) Cooperative decision making is a bounded cognitive process that balances the benefits and mental costs. The bounded rationality cooperative view restores the true picture of human cooperative behavior and provides new insights for understanding human cooperative behavior. It not only helps to compensate or overcome the shortcomings or deficiencies of existing cooperative theories, but also has significant practical significance for solving human cooperative dilemmas and promoting cooperative behavior in real life.