Evolution of Conformity in Social Dilemmas

Area of Science:

• Game Theory
• Behavioral Economics
• Evolutionary Dynamics

Background:

• Real-world experiments show players deviate from Nash equilibrium in Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) and Public Goods Games (PGG).
• Conditional cooperation and conformity are observed behaviors, suggesting risk aversion or a desire to align with group norms.
• Conforming strategies, by mirroring group behavior, can stabilize payoffs near the group average in complex environments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the role of conforming strategies in repeated PD and m-person PGG.
• To investigate the stability and evolutionary potential of conformity, particularly the tit-for-tat (TFT) strategy.
• To understand the conditions under which cooperation emerges in social dilemma games through conforming behaviors.

Main Methods:

• Modeling repeated PD and m-person PGG with strategies restricted to conforming types.
• Defining conforming strategies by initial action and influence of previous round's group behavior.
• Employing adaptive dynamics and stability analysis to examine strategy evolution.

Main Results:

• The tit-for-tat (TFT) strategy can prevent the invasion of non-cooperative strategies in both PD and PGG above a critical number of rounds.
• Conformity, as a general principle, fosters the evolution of cooperation.
• Cooperation can emerge and be sustained in populations initially dominated by non-cooperative strategies (AllD) through TFT-like strategies.

Conclusions:

• Conforming strategies, exemplified by TFT, are crucial for the emergence and stability of cooperation in social dilemma games.
• The findings offer insights into how cooperation can evolve in social contexts, even when individual rationality might suggest otherwise.
• Risk aversion and group alignment, embodied in conformity, drive cooperative outcomes in strategic interactions.