THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL PREFERENCES ON THE EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION IN PUBLIC GOOD GAMES

Marco A. Janssen (), Miles Manning () and Oyita Udiani ()
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Marco A. Janssen: Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, PO Box 872402, Tempe, AZ 85287-2402, United States
Miles Manning: Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center, Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, PO Box 872402, Tempe, AZ 8587-2402, United States
Oyita Udiani: Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center, Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, PO Box 872402, Tempe, AZ 8587-2402, United States

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 2014, vol. 17, issue 03n04, 1-22

Abstract: Human societies are unique in the level of cooperation among non-kin. Evolutionary models explaining this behavior typically assume pure strategies of cooperation and defection. Behavioral experiments, however, demonstrate that humans are typically conditional co-operators who have other-regarding preferences. Building on existing models on the evolution of cooperation and costly punishment, we use a utilitarian formulation of agent decision making to explore conditions that support the emergence of cooperative behavior. Our results indicate that cooperation levels are significantly lower for larger groups in contrast to the original pure strategy model. Here, defection behavior not only diminishes the public good, but also affects the expectations of group members leading conditional co-operators to change their strategies. Hence defection has a more damaging effect when decisions are based on expectations and not only pure strategies.

Keywords: Public good games; group selection; other-regarding preferences; conditional cooperation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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DOI: 10.1142/S0219525914500155

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