Reputation Effects in Public and Private Interactions

Hisashi Ohtsuki, Yoh Iwasa and Martin A Nowak

PLOS Computational Biology, 2015, vol. 11, issue 11, 1-11

Abstract: We study the evolution of cooperation in a model of indirect reciprocity where people interact in public and private situations. Public interactions have a high chance to be observed by others and always affect reputation. Private interactions have a lower chance to be observed and only occasionally affect reputation. We explore all second order social norms and study conditions for evolutionary stability of action rules. We observe the competition between “honest” and “hypocritical” strategies. The former cooperate both in public and in private. The later cooperate in public, where many others are watching, but try to get away with defection in private situations. The hypocritical idea is that in private situations it does not pay-off to cooperate, because there is a good chance that nobody will notice it. We find simple and intuitive conditions for the evolution of honest strategies.Author Summary: We study the evolution of cooperation based on reputation. This mechanism is called indirect reciprocity. In a world of binary reputations, people help a good individual but do not help a bad one. They also monitor their own reputation to receive reciprocation from others. We propose a novel model of indirect reciprocity where two types of interactions exist. In a public interaction your behavior is always observed by others. In a private interaction, your behavior is less likely to be observed. We study the competition between honest and hypocritical strategies. The former always help good individuals, whereas the latter do so only in private interactions. We describe conditions for the evolution of honest strategies.

Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pcbi00:1004527

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004527

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