Evolving institutions for collective action by selective imitation and self-interested design

Gavrilets, Sergey; Shrestha, Mahendra Duwal

doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.05.007

Cited by 36 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…In deriving our results we used an approximation which treats individual contributions x i as continuous. This approach is justified by results in Gavrilets & Shrestha (2019) as well as by the comparisons of our analytical with numerical results.…”

Section: Analytical Resultsmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…These include reputation, punishment (Brandt et al, 2003;Boyd et al, 2003;Fowler, 2005;Boyd et al, 2010;De Weerd & Verbrugge, 2011;Przepiorka & Diekmann, 2013;Perry et al, 2018), between-individual differences, social norms and institutions (Axelrod, 1986;Nyborg & Rege, 2003;Asheim, 2010;Gavrilets & Richerson, 2017;Michaeli & Spiro, 2017;Gavrilets et al, 2020). Certain types of free-riding can be mitigated if individuals update their strategies by using imitation or foresight rather than the myopic best response we used here (Perry et al, 2018;Gavrilets & Shrestha, 2019;Perry & Gavrilets, 2020). Moreover, we anticipate that some equilibria would not occur with foresight.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However below in analyzing their best-response actions we will approximately treat their efforts as continuous. This approach is justified by the results of Gavrilets & Shrestha (2019) and Gavrilets et al (2020) who showed that the two approaches make similar predictions. Best response for individuals from a non-cooperating group: Dropping the subscripts specifying the individual and its group, the payoff to an individual making effort x from a noncooperating group is…”

Section: Symbols Their Meaningmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Inequality also negatively affect the well-being of citizens in different ways especially when it becomes institutionalized (e.g., as studied in the Social Dominance Theory, Sidanius & Pratto 2001). To better understand these processes, we need to consider the dynamics of collective action (Olson, 1965;Hardin, 1982;Boyd et al, 2003;Brandt et al, 2003;Rand & Nowak, 2013;Medina, 2013;Gavrilets, 2015b;Perry et al, 2018;Gavrilets & Shrestha, 2019;Perry & Gavrilets, 2020) in cooperation and conflict at multiple levels (Boyd et al, 2003;Gavrilets & Fortunato, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The dynamics of cooperation, power, and inequality in a group-structured society

Tverskoi¹,

Senthilnathan²,

Gavrilets³

2021

Preprint

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Most human societies are characterized by the presence of groups which cooperate through joint actions but also compete for resources and power. The processes of within- and between- group cooperation and competition have shaped human history over the last several millennia. To deepen our understanding of the underlying social dynamics, we model a society subdivided into groups with constant sizes and dynamically changing powers. Both individuals within groups and groups themselves participate in collective actions. The groups are also engaged in political contests over power which determines how resources are distributed. Using analytical approximations and agent-based simulations, we show that the model exhibits rich behavior characterized by multiple stable equilibria and, under some conditions, non-equilibrium dynamics. The strength of democratic institutions plays a key role: increasing it promotes cooperation, reduces variation in power, and mitigates inequality among groups. We show that increasing potential benefits of between-group cooperation promotes it only in societies with strong democratic institutions. We show that small groups are successful in competition if the jointly-produced goods are rivalrous and the potential benefit of cooperation is small. Otherwise large groups dominate. Overall our model contributes towards a better understanding of the causes of variation between societies in terms of the economic and political inequality within them.

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Section: Analytical Resultsmentioning

confidence: 77%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Symbols Their Meaningmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The dynamics of cooperation, power, and inequality in a group-structured society

Tverskoi¹,

Senthilnathan²,

Gavrilets³

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…the ability to reason about the knowledge and thought processes of others in the social context (Premack & Wodruff, 1979;Krupenye et al, 2016;de Waal, 2016). Our earlier work has shown that foresight can solve the first-and second-order free-rider problems in the presence of punishment (Perry et al, 2018;Perry & Gavrilets, 2020), can lead to the evolution of social institutions by the route of self-interested design (Gavrilets & Shrestha, 2020) or undermine cooperation via tactical deception (Gavrilets, 2021)). The models and behaviours studied here provide an additional illustration of the power of foresight.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The dynamics of injunctive social norms

Gavrilets

2020

Evolut. Hum. Sci.

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Injunctive social norms are behaviours that one is expected to follow and expects others to follow in a given social situation; they are maintained by the threat of disapproval or punishment and by the process of internalization. Injunctive norms govern all aspects of our social life but the understanding of their effects on individual and group behaviour is currently rather incomplete. Here I develop a general mathematical approach describing the dynamics of injunctive norms in heterogeneous groups. My approach captures various costs and benefits, both material and normative, associated with norm-related behaviours including punishment and disapproval by others. It also allows for errors in decision-making and explicitly accounts for differences between individuals in their values, beliefs about the population state, and sensitivity to the actions of others. In addition, it enables one to study the consequences of mixing populations with different normative values and the effects of persuasive interventions. I describe how interactions of these factors affect individual and group behaviour. As an illustration, I consider policies developed by practitioners to abolish the norms of footbinding and female genital cutting, to decrease college students' drinking, and to increase pro-environmental behaviours. The theory developed here can be used for achieving a better understanding of historical and current social processes as well as for developing practical policies better accounting for human social behaviour.

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A flexible theory for the dynamics of social populations: Within‐group density dependence and between‐group processes

Lerch,

Abbott

2024

Ecological Monographs

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Despite the importance of population structures throughout ecology, relatively little theoretical attention has been paid to understanding the implications of social groups for population dynamics. The dynamics of socially structured populations differ substantially from those of unstructured or metapopulation‐structured populations, because social groups themselves may split, fuse, and compete. These “between‐group processes” remain understudied as drivers of the dynamics of socially structured populations. Here, we explore the role of various between‐group processes in the dynamics of socially structured populations. To do so, we analyze a model that includes births, deaths, migration, fissions, fusions, and between‐group competition and flexibly allows for density dependence in each process. Both logistic growth and an Allee effect are considered for within‐group density dependence. We show that the effect of various between‐group processes is mediated by their influence on the stable distribution of group sizes, with the ultimate impact on the population determined by the interaction between within‐group density dependence and the process's effect on the group size distribution. Between‐group interactions that change the number of groups can lead to both negative and positive density dependence at the global population level (even if birth and death rates depend only on group size and not population size). We conclude with a series of case studies that illustrates different ways that age, sex, and class structure impact the dynamics of social populations. These case studies demonstrate the importance of group‐formation mechanisms, the cost of having excess males in a group, and the potential drawbacks of generating too many reproductive individuals. In sum, our results make clear the importance of within‐group density dependence, between‐group dynamics, and the interactions between them for the population dynamics of social species and provide a flexible framework for modeling social populations.

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Evolving institutions for collective action by selective imitation and self-interested design

Cited by 36 publications

References 77 publications

The dynamics of cooperation, power, and inequality in a group-structured society

The dynamics of cooperation, power, and inequality in a group-structured society

The dynamics of injunctive social norms

A flexible theory for the dynamics of social populations: Within‐group density dependence and between‐group processes

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