Fortune favors the bold1 – and sometimes even the unreasonably overconfident, a new study says. Using a mathematical model of simulated competitors, researchers found that while overconfident strategies don’t always win, their wins tend to be bigger than those of more cautious opponents. The total rewards they reap often make up for their losses – and then some. [...]

New research explains why it makes evolutionary (and mathematical) sense for us to be kind to strangers. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that people are, on average, more generous to strangers than most mathematical models predict – and that there’s a logical reason for cooperation to evolve this [...]