Contingent cooperator¶
An agent willing to contribute to a collective good when enough others are observed or expected to cooperate, but not unconditionally.
Core Idea¶
Contingent cooperation makes prosocial action conditional on a sufficiently cooperative social environment. Beliefs about others' contributions alter the perceived fairness and effectiveness of one's own contribution, creating coordination thresholds and possible virtuous or vicious feedback. The abstraction is therefore identified by a declared carrier, a transformation or constraint over that carrier, and an invariant that tells an analyst whether the named structure is genuinely present.
The load-bearing residual is not the broad topic of behavioral game theory. It is An agent willing to contribute to a collective good when enough others are observed or expected to cooperate, but not unconditionally.
Scope of Application¶
Contingent cooperator belongs to behavioral game theory and is useful where the analyst can specify agents, contribution action, perceived cooperation threshold, observation or belief, collective payoff and reciprocity preference, then evaluate the agent's probability or level of cooperation rises with observed or expected cooperation by others under the stated setting. The scope is broad within that domain but bounded by the need for the agent's probability or level of cooperation rises with observed or expected cooperation by others under the stated setting. The entry records a descriptive analytical identity; practical use requires the governing domain's evidence, standards, and safety obligations.
Clarity¶
The abstraction clarifies a crowded vocabulary by making the agent's probability or level of cooperation rises with observed or expected cooperation by others under the stated setting the center of the account. A claim should name the carrier, the governing operation or relation, the applicable assumptions, and the recognition test. A bare label is insufficient because the name Contingent cooperator can be used for a formal identity, an implementation, or a neighboring result unless carrier and convention are stated.
Manages Complexity¶
Without the abstraction, an analyst must reason directly over many local details: the carrier roles, admissibility assumptions, competing conventions, derived invariants, boundary cases, and proof or validation obligations specific to Contingent cooperator. Contingent cooperator compresses them into the roles in the structural signature. That compression permits comparison across instances without erasing the variables that determine validity. It also exposes which details may be varied safely and which are constitutive.
Abstract Reasoning¶
- Identify the carrier. State what the elements, states, objects, or observations are: agents, contribution action, perceived cooperation threshold, observation or belief, collective payoff and reciprocity preference. Reject examples whose alleged carrier belongs to a different problem. 2. Lock the constitutive rule. Express the agent's probability or level of cooperation rises with observed or expected cooperation by others under the stated setting independently of one notation or implementation.
Knowledge Transfer¶
Knowledge transfers strongly among subfields of behavioral game theory because they reuse agents, contribution action, perceived cooperation threshold, observation or belief, collective payoff and reciprocity preference, Beliefs about others' contributions alter the perceived fairness and effectiveness of one's own contribution, creating coordination thresholds and possible virtuous or vicious feedback., and type the carrier, state every parameter and convention in the definition, test that the agent's probability or level of cooperation rises with observed or expected cooperation by others under the stated setting, compare the nearest accepted identity, and report counterexamples, uncertainty, and limiting cases.
Relationships to Other Abstractions¶
Current abstraction Contingent cooperator Domain-specific
Parents (1) — more general patterns this builds on
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Contingent cooperator is a kind of Reciprocity Prime
The proposed strict upward parent is
prime:reciprocity.
Hierarchy paths (3) — routes to 3 parentless roots
- Contingent cooperator → Reciprocity → Cooperation → Social Dilemma → Non-Zero-Sum Game → Game-Theoretic Strategy → Function (Mapping)
- Contingent cooperator → Reciprocity → Symmetry
- Contingent cooperator → Reciprocity → Cooperation → Social Dilemma → Trade-offs → Constraint
Neighborhood in Abstraction Space¶
Contingent cooperator sits in a moderately populated region (47th percentile for distinctiveness): it has near-neighbors but no dense thicket of look-alikes.
Family — Equilibrium & Mechanism Design (13 abstractions)
Nearest neighbors
- Homo reciprocans — 0.92
- Quantal response equilibrium — 0.89
- Communal reinforcement — 0.89
- Non-cooperative game theory — 0.89
- Rationalizable strategy — 0.88
Computed from structural-signature embeddings · 2026-09-08