When in Rome, do as the Romans do: the coevolution of altruistic punishment, conformist learning, and cooperation

Ricardo Guzmán (), Carlos Rodriguez-Sickert () and Robert Rowthorn

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We model the coevolution of behavioral strategies and social learning rules in the context of a cooperative dilemma, a situation in which individuals must decide whether or not to subordinate their own interests to those of the group. There are two learning rules in our model, conformism and payoff-dependent imitation, which evolve by natural selection, and three behavioral strategies, cooperate, defect, and cooperate plus punish defectors, which evolve under the influence of the prevailing learning rules. Group and individual level selective pressures drive evolution. We also simulate our model for conditions that approximate those in which early hominids lived. We find that conformism can evolve when the only problem that individuals face is a cooperative dilemma, in which prosocial behavior is always costly to the individual. Furthermore, the presence of conformists dramatically increases the group size for which cooperation can be sustained. The results of our model are robust: they hold even when migration rates are high, and when conflict among groups is infrequent.

Keywords: Evolution of behavior; Social learning; Cooperation; Conformism; Altruistic punishment; Public good games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 Z1 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-04-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-pbe and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published in Evolution and Human Behavior 2.28(2007): pp. 112-117

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:2037

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