Authors: Camilo García, Axel M. Navarro-Hernández.
Two major recent socio-psychological crises, the current Coronavirus pandemic and the high suicide rate among Latino youth, have triggered world leaders to call on cooperation as a part of their solution. Cooperation, in this respect, is defined as coordinated action directed toward the attainment of a mutual benefit. Building on the tenet that social processes influence, if not determine, the psychological ones, we examined and reflected on recent social and psychological sciences contributions to the understanding of cooperation. While anthropologists and sociologists looked more at cooperation as a practice, psychologists examined overall the process itself in relation to other basic psychological processes. A new perspective emerged in cross cultural psychology when the Laboratory of Social Interaction (LIS) enlightened by Greenfield’s theory, empirically reported the decline in cooperation as result of socio demographic changes in Mexico, a trend that found support in more than 25 subsequent studies. It is in light of this review and a current call for cooperation to alleviate the aforementioned crises that the authors arrived at the conclusion that in order to respond to this call, there is a need to promote the forgotten value of social solidarity that is indispensable for the survival of contemporary societies.
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