ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2024
Computational evolution of social norms in well-mixed and group-structured populations.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Why human societies adopt rigid moral rules: The efficiency-robustness trade-off.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- On the optimal integration of intelligent agents into network systems to steer cooperation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Incomplete reputation information and punishment in indirect reciprocity.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Exact conditions for evolutionary stability in indirect reciprocity under noise.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Institutions of public judgment established by social contract and taxation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Picking strategies in games of cooperation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Article
- Evolution of trust in theJournal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Article
- Indirect reciprocity under opinion synchronization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
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2 authors.
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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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