Abstract
Honest signaling is generally taken to be a necessary pre-condition for a stable signaling system, because deceptive signaling at a high enough rate should cause receivers to ignore the signal, which in turn undermines the utility of sending signals. Deception is normally thought to occur because of benefits it has to the deceiver. This raises the question of why signaling systems should exist and persist over time, especially in cases in which the interests of the senders and receivers are not well aligned. Punishment has been seen as a way of imposing costs on deceptive signalers. We investigate the effects of opportunistic—that is, non-altruistic punishment—on the evolution of an honest signaling system. Our model is based on research done on social insects. We model a society of agents, divided into three castes differing in aggressiveness. Under severe punishment deception is indeed asymptotically eliminated. Under somewhat less severe punishment, deception persists and the rates of deception correlate with social structure. We find that social structure robustly mediates the level of deception under regimes of punishment and that this is evident except in the most stringent of punishment regimes.
Highlights
A signaling system allows senders to alert receivers about properties of the world; a reliable signaling system is one in which the properties of the signal correlate well with properties of the world
We have modeled a strategic situation involving deception and punishment in terms of a stratefied population, as is common in evolutionary game theory
The population modifies its behavior via the death of agents and the replication of more successful strategies
Summary
A signaling system allows senders to alert receivers about properties of the world; a reliable signaling system is one in which the properties of the signal correlate well with properties of the world. We will consider an extremely simple model of the evolution and maintenance of a reliable signaling system based solely on punishment of dishonest agents. Individual agents will have no memory for past behavior and no interest in their own truthfulness; instead, they are willing to punish agents who have signaled deceptively to them. We will see that agents must balance the strategic advantage of deception with the potential cost of being punished. Reliable signaling can be achieved if the punishment is sufficiently harsh. In systems with less stringent punishment, deception will persist and shows an interesting connection with social structure, as we will discuss below
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