ABSTRACT
Understood as intentional collaboration between individuals, groups, and larger collective actors with a common goal in mind, cooperation is being called into question at many levels within our culturally diverse global society. How can systems as complex as ‘our’ global society cultivate common interests (and is it ‘our’ society at all)? How do cultural differences hinder or facilitate this process? And how do we avoid social dilemmas and curb the selfish practice of free-riding? In today’s knowledge systems and disciplines, opportunities for cooperation are generally determined by economic factors (as an expression of individual utility maximization) or psychological factors (with regard to positive or negative emotional disposition). On the one hand, they revolve around ‘interests’, which, in the best-case scenario, can be pooled to generate shared benefits and the moods that contribute thereto or detract therefrom. On the other hand, from a natural sciences perspective predispositions come into play that give varying impressions of how suited to cooperation individuals are.
