Evolution of coordinated punishment to enforce cooperation from an unbiased strategy space.

ABSTRACT: The emergence and maintenance of punishment to protect the commons remains an open puzzle in social and biological sciences. Even in societies where pro-social punishing is common, some individuals seek to cheat the system if they see a chance to do so-and public goods are often maintained in spite of cheaters who do not contribute. We present a model accounting for all possible strategies in a public goods game with punishment. While most models of punishment restrict the set of possible behaviours, excluding seemingly paradoxical anti-social strategies from the start, we show that these strategies can play an important role in explaining large-scale cooperation as observed in human societies. We find that coordinated punishment can emerge from individual interactions, but the stability o

SUBMITTER: Garcia J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6685031 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature