Group Cooperation without Group Selection: Modest Punishment Can Recruit Much Cooperation.

ABSTRACT: Humans everywhere cooperate in groups to achieve benefits not attainable by individuals. Individual effort is often not automatically tied to a proportionate share of group benefits. This decoupling allows for free-riding, a strategy that (absent countermeasures) outcompetes cooperation. Empirically and formally, punishment potentially solves the evolutionary puzzle of group cooperation. Nevertheless, standard analyses appear to show that punishment alone is insufficient, because second-order free riders (those who cooperate but do not punish) can be shown to outcompete punishers. Consequently, many have concluded that other processes, such as cultural or genetic group selection, are required. Here, we present a series of agent-based simulations that show that group cooperation sustained b

SUBMITTER: Krasnow MM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4404356 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature