Evolutionary Stability, Co-operation and Hamilton’s Rule

Ingela Alger and Jörgen Weibull

No 10-11, Carleton Economic Papers from Carleton University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Accordingto Hamilton’s(1964a, b) rule,a cost lyaction will be undertaken if its fitness cost to the actor falls short of the discounted benefit to the recipient,where the discount factor is Wright’s index of relatedness between the two. We propose a generalization of this rule,and show that if evolution operates at the level of behavior rules, rather than directly at the level of actions, evolution will select behavior rules that induce a degree of cooperation that may differ from that predicted by Hamilton’s rule as applied to actions. In social dilemmas there will be less(more)cooperation than under Hamilton’s rule if the actions are strategic substitutes(complements).Ourapproach is based on natural selection, defined in terms of personal(direct)fitness, and applies to a wide range of pair wise interactions.

JEL-codes: C73 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2010-12-03, Revised 2011-01-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-gth
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Published: Revised version: A Generalization of Hamilton’s Rule—Love Others How Much? Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 299, No. 7, (21 April 2012), pp. 42–54

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