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Murase Y, Hilbe C. Computational evolution of social norms in well-mixed and group-structured populations. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2024; 121:e2406885121. [PMID: 39116135 PMCID: PMC11331111 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2406885121] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/05/2024] [Accepted: 07/15/2024] [Indexed: 08/10/2024] Open
Abstract
Models of indirect reciprocity study how social norms promote cooperation. In these models, cooperative individuals build up a positive reputation, which in turn helps them in their future interactions. The exact reputational benefits of cooperation depend on the norm in place, which may change over time. Previous research focused on the stability of social norms. Much less is known about how social norms initially evolve when competing with many others. A comprehensive evolutionary analysis, however, has been difficult. Even among the comparably simple space of so-called third-order norms, there are thousands of possibilities, each one inducing its own reputation dynamics. To address this challenge, we use large-scale computer simulations. We study the reputation dynamics of each third-order norm and all evolutionary transitions between them. In contrast to established work with only a handful of norms, we find that cooperation is hard to maintain in well-mixed populations. However, within group-structured populations, cooperation can emerge. The most successful norm in our simulations is particularly simple. It regards cooperation as universally positive, and defection as usually negative-unless defection takes the form of justified punishment. This research sheds light on the complex interplay of social norms, their induced reputation dynamics, and population structure.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yohsuke Murase
- RIKEN Center for Computational Science, Kobe650-0047, Japan
| | - Christian Hilbe
- Max Planck Research Group Dynamics of Social Behavior, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön24306, Germany
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2
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Okada I, De Silva H. Norms prioritizing positive assessments are likely to maintain cooperation in private indirect reciprocity. Sci Rep 2024; 14:17264. [PMID: 39068170 PMCID: PMC11283462 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-67773-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/12/2024] [Accepted: 07/15/2024] [Indexed: 07/30/2024] Open
Abstract
Exploring the evolutionary mechanisms of cooperation in societies where reputational consensus cannot be assumed, as in divided societies, is important for understanding the basic principles of human behavior in modern societies. Indirect reciprocity provides a major explanatory mechanism, but most studies have focused on how donors, i.e., one who decides whether to donate (cooperate or help) to a recipient or do nothing, are assessed. It is natural to think that there is no consensus among assessors in our society, and there is no reason to update only donor assessments when updating assessments. We constructed an agent-based model that enables updating of both donors' and recipients' images. Our exhaustive simulations showed that the well analyzed assessment rules updating donors' images are only second best to an assessment rule updating bad images in most likely for maintaining cooperative regimes. Such a social norm that prioritizes a positive assessment is considered tolerant, which is also consistent with previous studies arguing that tolerant evaluation is important in private-assessment schemes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Isamu Okada
- Faculty of Business Administration, Soka University, Hachioji, 192-8577, Japan.
- Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics, WU - Vienna University of Economics and Business, 1020, Vienna, Austria.
| | - Hannelore De Silva
- Institute for Finance, Banking and Insurance, WU - Vienna University of Economics and Business, 1020, Vienna, Austria
- Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics, WU - Vienna University of Economics and Business, 1020, Vienna, Austria
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Kawakatsu M, Kessinger TA, Plotkin JB. A mechanistic model of gossip, reputations, and cooperation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2024; 121:e2400689121. [PMID: 38717858 PMCID: PMC11098103 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2400689121] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/12/2024] [Accepted: 04/12/2024] [Indexed: 05/18/2024] Open
Abstract
Social reputations facilitate cooperation: those who help others gain a good reputation, making them more likely to receive help themselves. But when people hold private views of one another, this cycle of indirect reciprocity breaks down, as disagreements lead to the perception of unjustified behavior that ultimately undermines cooperation. Theoretical studies often assume population-wide agreement about reputations, invoking rapid gossip as an endogenous mechanism for reaching consensus. However, the theory of indirect reciprocity lacks a mechanistic description of how gossip actually generates consensus. Here, we develop a mechanistic model of gossip-based indirect reciprocity that incorporates two alternative forms of gossip: exchanging information with randomly selected peers or consulting a single gossip source. We show that these two forms of gossip are mathematically equivalent under an appropriate transformation of parameters. We derive an analytical expression for the minimum amount of gossip required to reach sufficient consensus and stabilize cooperation. We analyze how the amount of gossip necessary for cooperation depends on the benefits and costs of cooperation, the assessment rule (social norm), and errors in reputation assessment, strategy execution, and gossip transmission. Finally, we show that biased gossip can either facilitate or hinder cooperation, depending on the direction and magnitude of the bias. Our results contribute to the growing literature on cooperation facilitated by communication, and they highlight the need to study strategic interactions coupled with the spread of social information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mari Kawakatsu
- Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA19104
- Center for Mathematical Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA19104
| | | | - Joshua B. Plotkin
- Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA19104
- Center for Mathematical Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA19104
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Pandula N, Akçay E, Morsky B. Indirect reciprocity with abductive reasoning. J Theor Biol 2024; 580:111715. [PMID: 38154522 DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2023.111715] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/07/2023] [Revised: 12/12/2023] [Accepted: 12/15/2023] [Indexed: 12/30/2023]
Abstract
Indirect reciprocity is a reputational mechanism through which cooperative behavior can be promoted amongst a group of individuals. However, in order for this mechanism to effectively do so, cheating must be appropriately punished and cooperating appropriately rewarded. Errors in assessments and actions can hinder this process. In such a setting, individuals might try to reason about evidence to assign reputations given the possibility of errors. Here, we consider a well-established theory of reasoning used to combine evidence, abductive reasoning, as a possible means by which such errors can be circumvented. Specifically, we use Dempster-Shafer theory to model individuals who account for possible errors by combining information about their beliefs about the status of the population and the errors rates and then choose the simplest scenario that could explain their observations in the context of these beliefs. We investigate the effectiveness of abductive reasoning at promoting cooperation for five social norms: Scoring, Shunning, Simple Standing, Staying, and Stern Judging. We find that, generally, abductive reasoning can outperform non-reasoning models at ameliorating the effects of the aforementioned challenges and promote higher levels of cooperation under low-error conditions. However, for high-error conditions, we find that abductive reasoning can undermine cooperation. Furthermore, we also find that a degree of bias towards believing previously held reputations can help sustain cooperation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Neel Pandula
- Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Erol Akçay
- Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Bryce Morsky
- Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; Department of Mathematics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.
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Florkin AL, Rosi A, Lecce S, Cavallini E. Cognitive Functions, Theory of Mind Abilities, and Personality Dispositions as Potential Predictors of the Detection of Reciprocity in Deceptive and Cooperative Contexts through Different Age Groups. Behav Sci (Basel) 2023; 13:1007. [PMID: 38131863 PMCID: PMC10741168 DOI: 10.3390/bs13121007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2023] [Revised: 12/08/2023] [Accepted: 12/08/2023] [Indexed: 12/23/2023] Open
Abstract
Reciprocity is a fundamental element in social interactions and implies an adequate response to the previous actions of our interactant. It is thus crucial to detect if a person is cooperating, deceiving, or cheating, to properly respond. However, older adults have been shown to have a lower ability to detect reciprocity compared to younger adults, partially tying this decline to cognitive functions. Another likely association to reciprocity in literature is made with personality dispositions, i.e., agreeableness, altruism, and empathic concern, and Theory of Mind (ToM). Consequently, the present study investigated age-related differences in the detection of the different components of reciprocity, as well as examined the predictors of reciprocity, such as cognitive measures, personality dispositions, and true and false beliefs in young (n = 98; 20-39 years), middle-aged (n = 106; 40-64 years), and older adults (n = 103; 65-96 years). The Mind Picture Story-Theory of Mind Questionnaire was used to measure the reciprocity components and true and false beliefs in each group. This study reported a significant decline in reciprocity detection from adults aged 65 years old and over. Additionally, the ability to detect reciprocity was significantly linked to cognitive functioning and ToM across all age groups, especially in older adults.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Alessia Rosi
- Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, 27100 Pavia, Italy; (A.-L.F.); (S.L.); (E.C.)
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Murase Y, Hilbe C. Indirect reciprocity with stochastic and dual reputation updates. PLoS Comput Biol 2023; 19:e1011271. [PMID: 37471286 PMCID: PMC10359017 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011271] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/02/2023] [Accepted: 06/13/2023] [Indexed: 07/22/2023] Open
Abstract
Cooperation is a crucial aspect of social life, yet understanding the nature of cooperation and how it can be promoted is an ongoing challenge. One mechanism for cooperation is indirect reciprocity. According to this mechanism, individuals cooperate to maintain a good reputation. This idea is embodied in a set of social norms called the "leading eight". When all information is publicly available, these norms have two major properties. Populations that employ these norms are fully cooperative, and they are stable against invasion by alternative norms. In this paper, we extend the framework of the leading eight in two directions. First, we include norms with 'dual' reputation updates. These norms do not only assign new reputations to an acting donor; they also allow to update the reputation of the passive recipient. Second, we allow social norms to be stochastic. Such norms allow individuals to evaluate others with certain probabilities. Using this framework, we characterize all evolutionarily stable norms that lead to full cooperation in the public information regime. When only the donor's reputation is updated, and all updates are deterministic, we recover the conventional model. In that case, we find two classes of stable norms: the leading eight and the 'secondary sixteen'. Stochasticity can further help to stabilize cooperation when the benefit of cooperation is comparably small. Moreover, updating the recipients' reputations can help populations to recover more quickly from errors. Overall, our study highlights a remarkable trade-off between the evolutionary stability of a norm and its robustness with respect to errors. Norms that correct errors quickly require higher benefits of cooperation to be stable.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yohsuke Murase
- RIKEN Center for Computational Science, Kobe, Japan
- Max Planck Research Group 'Dynamics of Social Behavior', Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, Germany
| | - Christian Hilbe
- Max Planck Research Group 'Dynamics of Social Behavior', Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, Germany
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Kessinger TA, Tarnita CE, Plotkin JB. Evolution of norms for judging social behavior. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2023; 120:e2219480120. [PMID: 37276388 PMCID: PMC10268218 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2219480120] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2022] [Accepted: 05/03/2023] [Indexed: 06/07/2023] Open
Abstract
Reputations provide a powerful mechanism to sustain cooperation, as individuals cooperate with those of good social standing. But how should someone's reputation be updated as we observe their social behavior, and when will a population converge on a shared norm for judging behavior? Here, we develop a mathematical model of cooperation conditioned on reputations, for a population that is stratified into groups. Each group may subscribe to a different social norm for assessing reputations and so norms compete as individuals choose to move from one group to another. We show that a group initially comprising a minority of the population may nonetheless overtake the entire population-especially if it adopts the Stern Judging norm, which assigns a bad reputation to individuals who cooperate with those of bad standing. When individuals do not change group membership, stratifying reputation information into groups tends to destabilize cooperation, unless individuals are strongly insular and favor in-group social interactions. We discuss the implications of our results for the structure of information flow in a population and for the evolution of social norms of judgment.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Corina E. Tarnita
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ08544
| | - Joshua B. Plotkin
- Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA19104
- Center for Mathematical Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA19104
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Fujimoto Y, Ohtsuki H. Evolutionary stability of cooperation in indirect reciprocity under noisy and private assessment. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2023; 120:e2300544120. [PMID: 37155910 PMCID: PMC10194006 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2300544120] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/25/2023] [Accepted: 04/09/2023] [Indexed: 05/10/2023] Open
Abstract
Indirect reciprocity is a mechanism that explains large-scale cooperation in humans. In indirect reciprocity, individuals use reputations to choose whether or not to cooperate with a partner and update others' reputations. A major question is how the rules to choose their actions and the rules to update reputations evolve. In the public reputation case where all individuals share the evaluation of others, social norms called Simple Standing (SS) and Stern Judging (SJ) have been known to maintain cooperation. However, in the case of private assessment where individuals independently evaluate others, the mechanism of maintenance of cooperation is still largely unknown. This study theoretically shows for the first time that cooperation by indirect reciprocity can be evolutionarily stable under private assessment. Specifically, we find that SS can be stable, but SJ can never be. This is intuitive because SS can correct interpersonal discrepancies in reputations through its simplicity. On the other hand, SJ is too complicated to avoid an accumulation of errors, which leads to the collapse of cooperation. We conclude that moderate simplicity is a key to stable cooperation under the private assessment. Our result provides a theoretical basis for the evolution of human cooperation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuma Fujimoto
- Research Center for Integrative Evolutionary Science, SOKENDAI (The Graduate University for Advanced Studies), Hayama240-0193, Japan
- Universal Biology Institute, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku113-0033, Japan
- CyberAgent, Inc., Shibuya-ku150-0042, Japan
| | - Hisashi Ohtsuki
- Research Center for Integrative Evolutionary Science, SOKENDAI (The Graduate University for Advanced Studies), Hayama240-0193, Japan
- Department of Evolutionary Studies of Biosystems, SOKENDAI, Hayama240-0193, Japan
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Schmid L, Ekbatani F, Hilbe C, Chatterjee K. Quantitative assessment can stabilize indirect reciprocity under imperfect information. Nat Commun 2023; 14:2086. [PMID: 37045828 PMCID: PMC10097696 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-37817-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/25/2022] [Accepted: 03/24/2023] [Indexed: 04/14/2023] Open
Abstract
The field of indirect reciprocity investigates how social norms can foster cooperation when individuals continuously monitor and assess each other's social interactions. By adhering to certain social norms, cooperating individuals can improve their reputation and, in turn, receive benefits from others. Eight social norms, known as the "leading eight," have been shown to effectively promote the evolution of cooperation as long as information is public and reliable. These norms categorize group members as either 'good' or 'bad'. In this study, we examine a scenario where individuals instead assign nuanced reputation scores to each other, and only cooperate with those whose reputation exceeds a certain threshold. We find both analytically and through simulations that such quantitative assessments are error-correcting, thus facilitating cooperation in situations where information is private and unreliable. Moreover, our results identify four specific norms that are robust to such conditions, and may be relevant for helping to sustain cooperation in natural populations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Schmid
- KAIST Graduate School of AI, 02455, Seoul, South Korea.
| | - Farbod Ekbatani
- Booth School of Business, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA
| | - Christian Hilbe
- Max Planck Research Group Dynamics of Social Behavior, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, 24306, Plön, Germany
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He S. Do you reap what you sow? Driving mechanism of supply chain transparency on consumers' indirect reciprocity. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1081297. [PMID: 36844304 PMCID: PMC9949968 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1081297] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/27/2022] [Accepted: 01/23/2023] [Indexed: 02/11/2023] Open
Abstract
Introduction To maintain sustainable poverty alleviation in the post-pandemic world, China encourages firms to participate in the "Social Commerce Helping Farmers Project." This study aims to explore the phenomenon of indirect reciprocity between firms, consumers, and farmers in the supply chain. This study explores how supply chain transparency stimulates indirect reciprocity among consumers through competence trust, goodwill trust, and integrity trust. Furthermore, we explore the impact of compassion and the need for social status on the model. Methods We fit a partial least square analysis structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) using data from an online random vignette-based experiment questionnaire survey. Results Supply chain transparency of social responsibility practices asymmetrically affects three dimensions of consumer trust by improving perceived information quality. And the three dimensions of trust asymmetrically contribute to indirect reciprocity. Furthermore, compassion has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between perceived information quality and trust. However, the moderating effect of the need for social status on the relationship between the three dimensions of trust and indirect reciprocity differed significantly. Discussion Our findings indicate that supply chain transparency improves consumer trust, making consumers more responsive and rewarding companies that assist vulnerable groups in their supply chains. Faced with a trust crisis, companies can take different measures to achieve their goals based on each dimension of trust. At the same time, companies need to consider differences in the responses of consumers with different personality traits (e.g., compassion and the need for social status) when revealing their corporate social responsibility practices to consumers.
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