Science (math) proves diversity helps cooperation.

Evolutionary game theory is a mathematical approach used to study (and predict) the evolution of social interactions, in which the study of conflict and decision-making is treated – like its name indicates – as a game. One such example are public good games (or PGG), which are frequently used to study cooperation as they look into social behaviour towards public goods - such as education, free health or even street lightning – those that every one can benefit from, regardless of how much they contribute (or not) to create it.

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The way PGG work is that each individual pays a certain amount to play (defectors play but do not pay/cooperate) and in the end profit, which is the total amount gathered in a game, is divided by all players. The reason why diversity increased cooperation had to with the fact that those few individuals with more connections and playing more games (the cooperators) would also have much higher “profits” and their impressive success would lead the other players to imitate their behaviour (even when the behaviour per se did not seem to improve directly their own life) resulting in an exponential increase of cooperation. In the same way, in real life the more connected/popular individuals are emulated, becoming role models and opinion makers.

Equally the model also predicted that even when no-cooperators lead to new no-cooperators (as it happens many times in real life where this kind of behaviour can spread within groups) this will result in less profit, less success and eventually their own self-extinction with only a few sporadic ones left to parasite cooperators.

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Interestingly, the model, when applied in a more economical perspective, also suggests that these communities, with high diversity and where the act of cooperation is what matters, will also have a much fairer wealth distribution.

PhysOrg.com via fark.com