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Evolution of cooperation with shared costs and benefits
Joel S Brown1, Thomas L Vincent
1Department of Biological Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607, USA. squirrel@uic.edu
Proceedings. Biological Sciences
|May 23, 2008
Summary
Cooperation evolves through a cost-benefit game model, revealing that nonlinearities in costs and benefits drive intermediate cooperation. This evolutionary game theory approach explains both cooperation and the Tragedy of the Commons.
Area of Science:
- Evolutionary Game Theory
- Behavioral Economics
- Social Dynamics
Background:
- Evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS) in most non-zero-sum games are not cooperative.
- Cooperation's evolution is a fundamental question in game theory and social sciences.
- Existing models often simplify the complex interplay of costs and benefits in cooperative acts.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze the evolution of cooperation using a continuum of strategies in a cost-benefit game.
- To model scenarios encompassing Prisoner's Dilemma, Snowdrift game, and Partial Altruism.
- To identify conditions under which cooperation emerges, persists, or fails.
Main Methods:
- Developed a cost-benefit game model with a continuum of strategies from non-cooperation to total cooperation.
- Analyzed the emergence of cooperation through the interplay of nonlinear cost and benefit functions.
- Investigated evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS) and non-ESS points, including unstable and stable equilibria.
Main Results:
- ESS solutions include total cooperation, partial cooperation, non-cooperation, and coexistence.
- Nonlinearities in cost (accelerating) and benefit (decelerating) functions lead to intermediate cooperation.
- Non-cooperative outcomes illustrate the Tragedy of the Commons; cooperative outcomes represent enlightened self-interest.
Conclusions:
- Cooperation emerges from the specific nonlinear dynamics of costs and benefits.
- The model predicts when cooperation is robust or fragile based on stability of equilibria.
- Findings offer insights into the potential and stability of cooperation in human and animal societies.
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