Abstract
Cooperation is a fundamental human trait but our understanding of how it functions remains incomplete. Indirect reciprocity is a particular case in point, where one-shot donations are made to unrelated beneficiaries without any guarantee of payback. Existing insights are largely from two independent perspectives: i) individual-level cognitive behaviour in decision making, and ii) identification of conditions that favour evolution of cooperation. We identify a fundamental connection between these two areas by examining social comparison as a means through which indirect reciprocity can evolve. Social comparison is well established as an inherent human disposition through which humans navigate the social world by self-referential evaluation of others. Donating to those that are at least as reputable as oneself emerges as a dominant heuristic, which represents aspirational homophily. This heuristic is found to be implicitly present in the current knowledge of conditions that favour indirect reciprocity. The effective social norms for updating reputation are also observed to support this heuristic. We hypothesise that the cognitive challenge associated with social comparison has contributed to cerebral expansion and the disproportionate human brain size, consistent with the social complexity hypothesis. The findings have relevance for the evolution of autonomous systems that are characterised by one-shot interactions.
Highlights
This recent examination of prosocial decision making is built on the dominance of intuitive processes[27] that allow complexity to be handled with a low cognitive burden
We examine the evolution of social comparison heuristics in the presence of alternative assessment rules, and observe the self-comparison heuristics that are promoted by natural selection
The results demonstrate that heuristics based on social comparison support the evolution of indirect reciprocity, naturally implying eight possible heuristic alternatives
Summary
This recent examination of prosocial decision making is built on the dominance of intuitive processes[27] that allow complexity to be handled with a low cognitive burden These processes represent heuristics which are fast and automatic, triggered by cues, guided by emotion and association, and involve little conscious thought[28]. In isolation of other factors, evolutionary simulation allows us to examine the social comparison heuristics favoured by natural selection, and the consequences of strategies that incorporate social comparison heuristics We assess this in the context of indirect reciprocity and the donation game, where reputation acts as a universal currency[42] through which social credibility between non-kin can be displayed, assessed and acted upon[7,8,43,44,45,46]. There are 23 possible social comparison heuristics that an individual may adopt
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