Cooperative Behavior Cascades in Human Social Networks
James H. Fowler, Nicholas A. Christakis

TL;DR
This study provides experimental evidence that cooperative behavior can spread through human social networks across multiple degrees of separation, with influence persisting over time and amplifying contributions.
Contribution
It is the first experimental demonstration showing that cooperative behavior cascades through human social networks up to three degrees of separation.
Findings
Cooperative behavior influences future contributions of others.
Influence persists for multiple periods.
Behavior spreads up to three degrees of separation.
Abstract
Theoretical models suggest that social networks influence the evolution of cooperation, but to date there have been few experimental studies. Observational data suggest that a wide variety of behaviors may spread in human social networks, but subjects in such studies can choose to befriend people with similar behaviors, posing difficulty for causal inference. Here, we exploit a seminal set of laboratory experiments that originally showed that voluntary costly punishment can help sustain cooperation. In these experiments, subjects were randomly assigned to a sequence of different groups in order to play a series of single-shot public goods games with strangers; this feature allowed us to draw networks of interactions to explore how cooperative and uncooperative behavior spreads from person to person to person. We show that, in both an ordinary public goods game and in a public goods game…
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