Abstract
Human cooperation, occurring without reciprocation and between unrelated individuals in large populations, represents an evolutionary puzzle. One potential explanation is that cooperative behaviour may be transmitted between individuals via social learning. Using an online social dilemma experiment, we find evidence that participants’ contributions were more consistent with payoff-biased transmission than prestige-biased transmission or conformity. We also found some evidence for lower cooperation (i) when exposed to social information about peer cooperation levels than without such information, and (ii) in the prisoners’ dilemma game compared to the snowdrift game. A simulation model established that the observed cooperation was more likely to be caused by participants’ general propensity to cooperate than by the effect of social learning strategies employed within the experiment, but that this cooperative propensity could be reduced through selection. Overall, our results support previous experimental evidence indicating the role of payoff-biased transmission in explaining cooperative behaviour, but we find that this effect was small and was overwhelmed by participants’ general propensity for cooperation.
Highlights
The spread of behaviour that benefits others is difficult to explain through natural selection, as such behaviour risks exploitation from others [1]
The statistical estimates of parameters contributing to behaviour in the experiment were fed into a simulation model to predict long-term trends, examining group size and the effects of selection on the propensity for cooperation
We found evidence for the use of payoff biased learning in social dilemmas, but little support for prestige or conformity
Summary
The spread of behaviour that benefits others is difficult to explain through natural selection, as such behaviour risks exploitation from others [1]. Further experimental evidence suggests that participants are more likely to exhibit a payoff bias than conformity in a cooperation game and reduce their contributions [42,43] and decrease their contributions when reminded how their behaviour was benefiting others [44]. In the SD game, participants received no points for the round if the total did not reach 10 This allows a comparison of cooperation rates and social learning strategy use between games beyond a one-shot. SD game?—Due to a lack of prior studies, we make no predictions over of the the interaction social learning strategy and payoff structure. We make decisions asocially because we expect a payoff bias to decrease cooperation predict lower cooperation with access to social information than when individuals make [45,46]. Decisions asocially because we expect a payoff bias to decrease cooperation [45,46]
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