Abstract
Humans sometimes cooperate to mutual advantage, and sometimes exploit one another. In industrialised societies, the prevalence of exploitation, in the form of crime, is related to the distribution of economic resources: more unequal societies tend to have higher crime, as well as lower social trust. We created a model of cooperation and exploitation to explore why this should be. Distinctively, our model features a desperation threshold, a level of resources below which it is extremely damaging to fall. Agents do not belong to fixed types, but condition their behaviour on their current resource level and the behaviour in the population around them. We show that the optimal action for individuals who are close to the desperation threshold is to exploit others. This remains true even in the presence of severe and probable punishment for exploitation, since successful exploitation is the quickest route out of desperation, whereas being punished does not make already desperate states much worse. Simulated populations with a sufficiently unequal distribution of resources rapidly evolve an equilibrium of low trust and zero cooperation: desperate individuals try to exploit, and non-desperate individuals avoid interaction altogether. Making the distribution of resources more equal or increasing social mobility is generally effective in producing a high cooperation, high trust equilibrium; increasing punishment severity is not.
Highlights
Humans sometimes cooperate to mutual advantage, and sometimes exploit one another
Each of the three actions is optimal in a different region of the space formed by current resources s and the trustworthiness of others 1 − p (Fig. 1a)
A critical value of s, agents should always exploit, regardless of trustworthiness. This critical value is in the vicinity of the desperation threshold, though it can be lower or higher depending on the value of other parameters
Summary
Humans sometimes cooperate to mutual advantage, and sometimes exploit one another. In industrialised societies, the prevalence of exploitation, in the form of crime, is related to the distribution of economic resources: more unequal societies tend to have higher crime, as well as lower social trust. This principle successfully explains variation in offending behaviour both within and between s ocieties[12,16] It can explain the relationship between crime levels and inequality, in compositional manner, because unequal societies produce poorer legitimate opportunities for people at the lower end of the socioeconomic s pectrum[2]. These models are generally taken to predict that making punishments for crime more severe should reduce the prevalence of offending, because harsher punishment should reduce the expected utility associated with the criminal option. Our model is novel in explicitly incorporating a desperation threshold into decisions about whether to cooperate (analogous in our model to participating in legitimate economic activity) or exploit others (analogous to committing an acquisitive crime)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
