People generally are pretty cooperative, or as scientists often call it, prosocial. However, an interesting question for scientists is: Why are we not more selfish, especially when we can get away with it? Why do we often help others and invest energy in tasks, when instead we could do nothing and let others do all the work? Finding an answer to this question is important, because the success of our society depends a great deal on citizens' decisions to be prosocial instead of selfish. For instance, think about separating trash into different bins: it is important that we do this in order to make recycling possible, but the sorting does take some effort for us. Also, buying a train ticket instead of sneaking on the train for free is another example of prosociality. When everyone buys a ticket, society ends up with more money, which can then be used to keep the trains safe and affordable for everyone.

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Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2017.00047