Postgraduate Student Profile

Karolina SylwesterKarolina Sylwester

Research Interests

I am interested in investigating behaviours that can act as biological or social signals to others such as risk taking, generosity or conspicuous consumption. My current research focuses on how people make economic decisions when in a reputation-building setting. Sexual selection and its manifestations in the contemporary world is another topic I am keen on exploring. In the past I looked at the attractiveness of risk taking in long-and short-term sexual partners. I am open to research ideas and collaborations on anything related to evolution and human behaviour.

Project

The Role of Reputations in the Evolution of Cooperation

The aim of my project is to investigate the role of reputation building in cooperative behaviour observed in humans. In particular, I explore the possibility, first proposed by G. Roberts, that individuals try to outcompete each other in cooperative reputations in order to acquire desired partners for future dyadic interactions. In my research, cooperation is treated as a costly signal which advertises resources or pro-social attributions of the signallers. The experiments conducted so far support the notion of competitive altruism. More importantly, my findings suggest that this mechanism aids in re-establishing a high level of cooperation in social dilemmas more effectively than another reputation-based process, indirect reciprocity (helping those who help others).

My research also focuses on determining how people assess the trustworthiness and cooperativeness of a potential partner. I am interested in what predicts cooperative decision more accurately: personal experience or second-hand reputational information. Another area of my study is how good people are at judging cooperative intentions from facial cues. My results indicate that neither the social-perceptual nor the social-cognitive Theory of Mind skills are related to the ability to recognize cooperative intentions in faces. Finally, I investigate the idea that people are cognitively sensitive to reputational gossip. My results demonstrate that gossip about cooperative reputations (in particular negative gossip) is recalled with a higher accuracy than non-reputational social information. These findings highlight the policing function of language and support the strong version of Machiavellian Intelligence/social brain hypothesis.

Other interests

I enjoy popularizing science. I published in a Polish popular science journal ‘Wiedza i Życie’. I am also a fan of Darwin’s work: I volunteered at Darwin Festival in Cambridge in 2009 and organized a local Darwin quiz for students and the Newcastle community. I am also actively involved in the Darwin Reading Group. I would be happy to join any projects that aim to promote evolution in the public domain.

Publications

  • Sylwester, K. & Pawłowski, B. (2010) ‘Daring to be darling: Attractiveness of risk takers as partners in long- and short-term sexual relationships’ Sex Roles (provisionally accepted)
  • Sylwester, K. & Roberts, G. (2010) Cooperators benefit through reputation-based partner choice in economic games Biology Letters (in press)
  • Sylwester, K. & Roberts, G. (in preparation) The generous pauper: resource inequality affects reputation-building cooperation in social dilemmas
  • Sylwester, K. & Roberts, G. (in preparation) Cognitive sensitivity to reputational gossip
  • Sylwester, K. (2010) Niebezpieczny dobór płciowy Wiedza i Życie (Polish popular science journal), 1: 52-56