Individualistic attitudes in Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma undermine evolutionary fitness and may drive cooperative human players to extinction
Inarguably, humans perform the richest plethora of prosocial behaviours in the animal kingdom, and these are important for understanding how humans navigate their social environment. The success and failure of strategies human players devise also have implications for determining long-term socio-eco...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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The Royal Society
2024-03-01
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| Series: | Royal Society Open Science |
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| Online Access: | https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230867 |
| _version_ | 1827180239301640192 |
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| author | Erdem Pulcu |
| author_facet | Erdem Pulcu |
| author_sort | Erdem Pulcu |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Inarguably, humans perform the richest plethora of prosocial behaviours in the animal kingdom, and these are important for understanding how humans navigate their social environment. The success and failure of strategies human players devise also have implications for determining long-term socio-economic/evolutionary fitness. Following the footsteps of Press and Dyson (2012), I implemented their evolutionary game-theoretic modelling from Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (a behavioural economic probe of interpersonal cooperation) and re-analysed already published data on human proposer behaviour in the Ultimatum Game (a behavioural economic probe of altruistic punishment) involving 50 human participants versus stochastic computerized opponents with prosocial and individualistic social value orientations. Although the results indicate that it is more likely to break cycles of mutual defection in ecosystems in which humans interact with individualistic opponents, analysis of social-economic fitness at the Markov stationary states suggested that this comes at an evolutionary cost. Overall, human players acted in a significantly more cooperative manner than their opponents, but they failed to overcome extortion from individualistic agents, risking ‘extinction’ in 70% of the cases. These findings demonstrate human players might be short-sighted, and social interactive decision strategies they devise while adjusting to different types of opponents may not be optimal in the long run. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-24T17:09:27Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-6d4f809c1ea54ec387bce1126cf1bcae |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2054-5703 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2025-03-21T05:27:45Z |
| publishDate | 2024-03-01 |
| publisher | The Royal Society |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Royal Society Open Science |
| spelling | doaj.art-6d4f809c1ea54ec387bce1126cf1bcae2024-07-25T10:32:51ZengThe Royal SocietyRoyal Society Open Science2054-57032024-03-0111310.1098/rsos.230867Individualistic attitudes in Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma undermine evolutionary fitness and may drive cooperative human players to extinctionErdem Pulcu0Department of Psychiatry, Psychopharmacology and Emotion Research Lab, Computational Psychiatry Lab, University of Oxford , Oxford, UKInarguably, humans perform the richest plethora of prosocial behaviours in the animal kingdom, and these are important for understanding how humans navigate their social environment. The success and failure of strategies human players devise also have implications for determining long-term socio-economic/evolutionary fitness. Following the footsteps of Press and Dyson (2012), I implemented their evolutionary game-theoretic modelling from Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (a behavioural economic probe of interpersonal cooperation) and re-analysed already published data on human proposer behaviour in the Ultimatum Game (a behavioural economic probe of altruistic punishment) involving 50 human participants versus stochastic computerized opponents with prosocial and individualistic social value orientations. Although the results indicate that it is more likely to break cycles of mutual defection in ecosystems in which humans interact with individualistic opponents, analysis of social-economic fitness at the Markov stationary states suggested that this comes at an evolutionary cost. Overall, human players acted in a significantly more cooperative manner than their opponents, but they failed to overcome extortion from individualistic agents, risking ‘extinction’ in 70% of the cases. These findings demonstrate human players might be short-sighted, and social interactive decision strategies they devise while adjusting to different types of opponents may not be optimal in the long run.https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230867Prisoner’s DilemmaUltimatum Gameevolutionary game theoryzero-determinant strategyinterpersonal cooperationextortion |
| spellingShingle | Erdem Pulcu Individualistic attitudes in Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma undermine evolutionary fitness and may drive cooperative human players to extinction Royal Society Open Science Prisoner’s Dilemma Ultimatum Game evolutionary game theory zero-determinant strategy interpersonal cooperation extortion |
| title | Individualistic attitudes in Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma undermine evolutionary fitness and may drive cooperative human players to extinction |
| title_full | Individualistic attitudes in Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma undermine evolutionary fitness and may drive cooperative human players to extinction |
| title_fullStr | Individualistic attitudes in Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma undermine evolutionary fitness and may drive cooperative human players to extinction |
| title_full_unstemmed | Individualistic attitudes in Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma undermine evolutionary fitness and may drive cooperative human players to extinction |
| title_short | Individualistic attitudes in Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma undermine evolutionary fitness and may drive cooperative human players to extinction |
| title_sort | individualistic attitudes in iterated prisoner s dilemma undermine evolutionary fitness and may drive cooperative human players to extinction |
| topic | Prisoner’s Dilemma Ultimatum Game evolutionary game theory zero-determinant strategy interpersonal cooperation extortion |
| url | https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230867 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT erdempulcu individualisticattitudesiniteratedprisonersdilemmaundermineevolutionaryfitnessandmaydrivecooperativehumanplayerstoextinction |