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Group Size, Heterogeneity, And Prosocial Behavior: Designing Legal Structures To Facilitate Cooperation In A Diverse Society, Benjamin Barros
Group Size, Heterogeneity, And Prosocial Behavior: Designing Legal Structures To Facilitate Cooperation In A Diverse Society, Benjamin Barros
Benjamin Barros
Recent social science research has found that in many scenarios, increases in group size and diversity have a negative impact on cooperation and other prosocial behavior. A related study by the political scientist Robert Putnam has created a firestorm of debate within the past year about the negative effects of diversity on the social fabric.
This essay addresses a subset of this larger debate. It looks to recent social science research to explore how and why group size and diversity impact cooperation and other prosocial behaviors. It then considers how to take the results of this research into account in …